The Adventures of The Lost Boys and Nerd Vampire
by VinylVictory
Summary: Sequel to The Adventures of Evelyn, David, and Lost Girls. David has to decide whether to kill Evelyn or turn her. A young vampire, Cathy, who works at McDonalds gets involved with the boys. Please read and review! Fic 2 of the Adventure Series
1. Chapter 1 Gang Leader's Girl

Author's Note: Sorry it took so long to get this up. Thank you to all who reviewed. This is all new, and there's a bit more in the next chapter than what I put in the preview at the end of the first fic. I hope you like it. I'm working out some stuff about David and Evelyn's relationship so it's taking me longer than usual to get chapter 3 out, but I've got a bit of it down. Anyways, that's the news. Hope you enjoy the sequel!

Chapter 1- Gang Leader's Girl

Evelyn sipped her coffee and flipped through the paperback she held in her other hand. She stood in a bookstore in the downtown area of Santa Carla. She shook her head, flipping the hair, which always fell in her eyes, out of the way.

"Excuse me. You can't drink that in here," said a voice from behind her. Evelyn turned around and saw a short, young woman wearing a tunic, skinny jeans, and flats. "Sorry," she continued. "Do you want me to throw it away for you? There's a trash can over there."

Evelyn thought that one of the most perfect combinations that could be found in the simple life was books and coffee. The chilly bay wind was blowing outside in the evening air and Evelyn did not want to step outside to finish her coffee, nor did she want to throw the almost full cardboard cup away. "No thanks," she said. "I'll pay for anything I spill it on."

"Uh…" said the young woman, unsure of what to do. Evelyn smiled at her. It was a kind smile, wide and open, but it was laced with cyanide and a promise of retribution if Evelyn was crossed. The young shop girl, Julie, looked up at Evelyn. She thought she had seen her somewhere. She was one of the ones who made certain areas of Santa Carla their regular haunts, but where was she from? The town square? The downtown area in the art district? The Spanish Gypsy, a local club haunted by many of the art crowd and wild college age kids? No, she wasn't a regular at any of those places. She was surely from the Boardwalk then, one of the girls who loitered around the many attractions of the Boardwalk, floating from bonfire to bonfire. Was that who she was?

"I'll finish it quickly," said Evelyn. She took a big gulp, hoping to finish her lovely coffee before this girl got too pushy.

"Uhhh… erm… I think… It's still against the rules to drink that in here. You could go outside maybe… I'm sorry," Julie said, struggling for the words that would have some effect on this young woman who clearly wasn't going to listen to her.

Evelyn took the cup away from her lips again. "Please," she said, only it sounded more like a command than a plea, "I'll pay for anything I spill anything on. I swear. It's just," Evelyn paused, fixing her eyes on the girl, "I really hate to waste—" but at that moment, the bell above the door rang and instantly Evelyn seemed infinitely more docile in comparison to the group who had just walked in through the door.

The Lost Boys, they were famous among true Santa Carlans. Anyone who had ever been down to the boardwalk at night not but a few times would instantly recognize the crew. There were a lot of crazy dressers around Santa Carla, but this group demanded your attention not only through there clothes, but more so through their manner. They were in charge and there was nothing you could do.

A chill ran through Julie, partly because of her proximity to the four handsome boys, but more from fear. There were a million and one bad stories about them. If you got on the other gangs' bad side, you would find yourself ostracized at the least, and beat up at the most. If you got on The Lost Boys' bad side, a small gang of only four young men, what happened was simple: you went missing. As Julie looked back at Evelyn she remembered who Evelyn was. She was the girl on the back of the bike. The boys were here for her, and she wasn't just any of the boy's girlfriend, she was their leader's lady. She was the Persephone to David's Hades.

David smirked at Julie. He knew she was afraid. Evelyn wasn't afraid, though. These were her friends. Regardless of what they did to others, they were on her side. Of all the discomforts of being a veritable outlaw's girlfriend, and friend to the baddest bad boys on the Boardwalk, one of the comforts she most enjoyed was the protection. Whatever happened there was someone looking out for her. She could walk the streets carefree because she knew that everyone else knew that if you messed with her, David would come for you. A lot of fear she didn't even know she had was gone because of that. The Lost Boys got special treatment from people because others were afraid, and Evelyn was content to roll along with it.

"Can I help you?" asked Julie, reverting to the automatic phrase she was trained to use, smile included.

The other boys laughed quietly, and Julie wasn't sure what they were laughing at. David shook his head, still smirking. Evelyn had walked over to the trash can, and from the angle she was tipping her cup Julie could tell she had finished her drink.


	2. Chapter 2 Cathy The Uncool Vampire

Chapter 2- Cathy The Uncool Vampire.

I always thought that vampires were supposed to be cool. 'Cause in like the movies and books they're either some freaky bald guy like in Nosferatu or some sexy fiend like in Interview with the Vampire and Queen of the Damned.

But I'm here to tell ya, I'm a vampire and I'm not cool. Here are three examples of my uncoolness:

1) My name is Cathy. It's not special or sexy or scary like _Lestat de Lioncourt_ or _Dracula_ or even Mina Murray (or Harker) or Lucy Westenra. Those are all famous vampires. I guess my real name, Catherine, is more vampire-y, but my grandma's name is Catherine, and she smells funny.

2) I work at McDonalds. I wear an ugly polo shirt and a tacky visor and have uttered the words "Do you want fries with that?"

3) I don't even have real fangs. Well, I do, but they aren't there all the time. In the movies, the fangs are kind of small and hidden so you might think you see something, but are too afraid to look closer. I don't have fangs like that. Basically, when I'm hungry or angry or emotional my face gets ugly and I get fangs the size of two nuclear warheads. Not sexy, just ugly and scary. I get red-orange eyes, though. I guess that's kind of cool.

I wonder if other vampires are as uncool as me. After I was turned, I rented a bunch of movies and read a bunch of books about vampires. I really didn't know what was going on and it was the only thing I could think of to do. No Dr. Van Helsing to come down and diagnose me. But I've never met another vampire. Except once, and I'm not even sure he _was_ the vampire.

Okay, so a couple months ago I was at this party on the beach and this guy asks me if I want a drink and I say yes because I did. When I was halfway done with the drink I realized I probably shouldn't be taking drinks from strange boys, but the guy didn't even follow me after, he was just sort of around. I guess there was vampire blood in that drink. That's as best as I can figure. I wasn't bitten, and that was the only thing I drank.

I asked around about the guy later. He was some sort of drifter who came into town from LA, but no one had seen him since another party a couple of nights after the one I went to. Most people assumed he drifted on out again, but he left what people thought was his car, so who knows. Maybe that car was stolen and he just stole another one. Maybe he turned into a bat and flew (I haven't figured out how to do that yet. Turn into a bat, I mean. I've woken up on my ceiling loads of times).

I thought vampires looked like Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt! At least like Stuart Townsend or Gary Oldman! The Drink Guy wasn't even hot! And what about Kate Beckinsale? Shouldn't I look like her?

Where's the romance? Where's the drama? Pssht, you're tellin' me!

But I guess in a coastal tourist town you can't expect too much coolness. I guess a lot of people here are as cool as me.

Do you know who's cool? The Lost Boys, that's who. I love it when they come in. "Mmm mmm," says Yolanda, a Puerto Rican woman with a bum the size of the moon, when she catches me eyeing them. "You gonna get yourself in trouble, girl. My cousin, she had a friend who was eyeing one of them, and she disappeared," Yolanda makes a sound and moves her hand in a swift upward motion to illustrate, "right off the street. No one never saw her again." Taisha, a big black woman with three kids, says basically the same thing when she sees me have a freak attack when they come through my line. "Mmhmm," she says, looking at me in that way she looks at her kids when they've been doing something bad, "don't you even think about it. All those boys at the boardwalk come through here, and you're checkin' out the baddest gang in Santa Carla. I pray for your mama, girl."

They both know I used to like David, the leader. He was so… smooth and he always knew what he wanted right away, and didn't spend time looking at the menu, and on the rare occasion he did he always rubbed his beard and I can hear it make that _hiss_ beard rubbing noise that stubbly beards make and I just wanted to reach out and touch it. I also wanted to touch his hair. It's all bleach blond and spiky and I want to mess it up to see if it will spring back into place. He has pretty eyes.

But lately he's always been in here with this girl. I don't know her name, but she's nice. She always tips when she's in my line and gives me this big smile. Not in a fake I-smile-at-everyone way, 'cause she never smiles, but she looks up at me and she smiles like she's really pleased to see me. I think it's because I always talk to her when I talk to the boys. I always try and talk with them. I don't know why, it's like an impulse. She's nice and goes nicely with David so I'm not upset. Plus, it made me see something I probably wouldn't have noticed before, because David is the leader and he's really who you look at when you talk to the group.

That something that I noticed's name is Paul. I was just thinking 'Hmm… time to find a new way to occupy my time,' about David since I realized I didn't really like him any more, and Paul comes up and asks me for an extra extra large chocolate shake. He said it all sincerely and excitedly too, like he really really wanted one. I laughed and told him we only have small, medium, and large, but he can get two if he wants.

"Oh," he said and he seemed disappointed. "I'll have… two… mediums then."

"For twenty-five cents more you can make one of those a large," I said. I have to. They make me.

"Two larges then!" he said and he seemed excited.

"Alright," I said and punched in his order.

Paul is cool. I like Paul. I didn't want to like Paul at first, because it is so much simpler not to like anyone, and I didn't just want to bounce from one crush to another, but I do. David was like a minor interest. Paul could easily rise up into the realms of obsession. I like Paul.

I told The Lost Boys my theory about uncool vampires, about how you never hear about them. They all laughed really hard. I didn't realize it was that funny. This Daniel Johnston song came on the radio (someone had requested it) and it's called Devil Town. It has this verse about all his friends being vampires and David asked me if I liked vampires. I just launched into it. I had it all pent up inside of me, I wanted to hear someone's opinion. I didn't mention I was a vampire. "Well, vampires are cool I guess, but you know what? You never hear about the uncool vampires, y'know? Like, instead of going out and seducing people or whatever they just stay in and watch the Discovery Channel and play Solitaire on the computer. Like, take a vampire working at McDonalds, for instance. You never hear about that kind of vampire." I felt really risky mentioning something so close to home. I'm always terrified people are going to figure it out.

My parents know I'm a vampire. They both took it really hard. My mom got all teary eyed when she would look at me, and my dad just sort of froze up, like I wasn't even his daughter anymore. They both calmed down though. They're getting used to it. When I first told them I think they thought I had lost it. Then I showed them my scary-face (that's what I call it when I go all weird). I hadn't been drinking any blood so it was really easy to slip into. They both freaked out. I wish I could have thought of a better way to prove it, but then that was the only vampire thing I could do.

I feed regularly now. My parents both donate blood to me, and they get blood from the butcher. I hate drinking my parents' blood. It feels… wrong. Either like I shouldn't be feeding from what is theirs or like it's something dirty. Incestuous, I guess. I'm not really sure. They think it's all working out and it'll be okay because I don't need that much blood.

They don't know I've been sneaking out and killing people.


	3. Chapter 3 Beauty of The Boardwalk

Chapter 3- Beauty of the Boardwalk

It was sunset on the boardwalk. Everything was shifting. The surfers were making the trek from the waves in the ocean across the beach to the parking lot, where most of them would change out of their wet suits right there. The small children on the boardwalk were going home, and the Night People were coming out. The youth with no where to go flocked to the boardwalk at night, it's bright lights keeping the dark, cold night out, making it seem more distant. Dyed hair and tie dye shirts moved down the boardwalk along with a mass of leather and denim, all the people who hung out there regularly. All the regulars were there, except for four of them that was.

Evelyn walked down the boardwalk, her heeled boots clicking on the wooden planks and a wide-brimmed black hat pulled down low over her eyes. As usual she carried her large, black basket. Everyone knew not to mess with her. Firstly, she'd devour your soul, and if she didn't get you, The Lost Boys would. She walked alone on the boardwalk, a card-carrying member of the Underworld of Santa Carla, at night. Not a very safe thing to do.

Evelyn had also become a small legend amongst the Boardies, as they kids who basically lived at the boardwalk were called. The combination of her strange arrival on the boardwalk crowd mixed with what seemed instantaneous acceptance into The Lost Boys surrounded her in mystery. She had just shown up one night. None of them recalled seeing her before she was by David's side, even though she was around in reality. To the Boardies, she just emerged from nowhere, from the same place The Lost Boys came from when they just showed up all those years ago. No one knew where she had come from, either. If you listened closely, you could hear the slight lilt of a southern accent, soft and with a twang, around the edges of her voice. That led to guessing, and talking among those with nothing to talk about. Her story went from harmless speculation in passing to an adventure of epic proportions. Some said she came from the hot fields of Alabama, a land with a segregated and violent past, or the hot cities of Alabama. Some said she was from the voodoo bayous of Louisiana; the story grew and grew until she was the daughter of an ancient voodoo queen who lived forever, and then it was Evelyn herself who was the voodoo queen who lived on and on. Some said she was from the kudzu filled fields of the Carolinas, and others said she was from a farm in Tennessee. Still others speculated that she was born on the cornfields of Texas, or in the city, in Austin, where everything was a little bit stranger. No one knew, she just appeared. No one knew where she lived, because no one knew where The Lost Boys lived.

Another thing about the gangs and wannabe gangs of the Boardwalk is that it was hard to have turf. You had your regular spots, but the territories weren't as clean-cut as in some other areas. If there was no turf, it was hard to have turf wars, which is basically what gangs do. One gang angers another gang and that gang retaliates and then the first gang retaliates back and maybe the second also angers another gang who retaliate until you've got this web of grudges and retaliation. One thing that had developed into some sort of prize was actually not a thing at all, but a person. Another thing about Evelyn that made her slightly infamous was her beauty. She wasn't pretty like a beach girl, or a model, or an actress. She didn't have that Paris Hilton type of prettiness, or Anna Nicole Smith looks, or Jessica Simpson or Jessica Alba or any of them. She had an unusual face, it had a beauty like a Renaissance Master painter's portrait. Her unusual beauty combined with the mystery that surrounded her made her like a coveted property. If you could get her on your side, that was respect, but she, Evelyn, was associated with no gang other than The Lost Boys. Many other gangs tried to get her, to make her their "property". Evelyn would have none of it, and certainly David wouldn't either.

Most respected the power of The Lost Boy's protection of Evelyn, but many cared to try it. Jake was one such person. Jake was fifteen, but he thought he was twenty five. He was skinny with greasy hair and bad acne. He had two goons, Larry and Garth, who stood with him. He thought he was a gang banger, but he was just a wannabe. He thought if Evelyn would be his girl, then he would get some respect.

"Hey, kitty, kitty," he said to her, he and his goons following her along the boardwalk, a little too close for comfort. She said nothing, kept her pace, and watched them from the corner of her eye.

"Watch out," she said flatly.

"Aw, c'mon…" Jake said, reaching out and putting his arm around her waist, touching her face with his other hand.

"You will not touch me," she said, deadly, pulling away.

"Aw, baby," said Jake, and his goons laughed. He reached out towards her.

"I'm not your—" Evelyn started to say, but then Jake called her something truly terrible. It was demeaning and crude and misogynistic. Evelyn's eyes bugged and she opened her mouth to give him hell when both Jake's arms were grabbed from behind and wrenched back at a painful angle.

Jake cried out. He was picked up by his arms and slammed on the ground. David stood coolly above him. He said nothing, just growled softly, a deep rumble sounding very faint. Larry and Garth were shocked for a moment, but then a little message blinked into their brains registering what was going on: fight. They lurched forward, each one grabbing one of David's arms. David reached up and threw each of them impossibly far across the small side street they were in. David nudged Jake's chin with the tip of his boot, scraping his face. He raised his eyebrows. Jake was afraid, but his tough act was the only defense he knew so he said "I'll say it again. I'll call her that again," his voice raspy from having the wind knocked out of him.

"You will…?" said David quietly, coolly. 'Don't get mad, get even' was a core part of David's personal philosophy.

Jake opened his mouth to utter some other stupid remark when David picked him up by his shirt, slightly ripping it, threw him against the wall of the building they were next to, and held him there with one hand. The goons were trying to get up, completely winded, but they could see that the way David had thrown and grabbed Jake was not abiding by the normal laws of strength and physics.

Evelyn sat on the edge of a box, holding her basket and calmly knocking the heels of her shoes against the wood she was sitting on. She blinked. Though the fighting worried her, it always felt nice to have someone taking care of you, to be worth fighting for. She smiled, pleased, but still fearful.

"Hey!" yelled a store owner, stepping outside from his doorway to the alley. "Get out of here or I'll call the police, ya boardwalk trash!" Evelyn knocked her boot against the dumpster loudly to get David's attention. She widened her eyes and jerked her head towards the street, telling him that she wanted to get out of there. Evelyn was always afraid that they would get caught. David stood there, contemplating. Evelyn hopped down and motioned towards the man in the doorway.

"The cops!" she whispered anxiously.

"Doesn't matter," said David. He had found his meal and didn't want to leave it.

"David!" she whispered urgently. "It's too early for that. There are too many people around! C'mon," she pleaded. "They'll lock us both up."

David grunted. Women. But he knew she was right. He dragged the boy, fingers digging into Jake's shoulder, down towards the chain link fence in the middle of the small side street alleyway. David ripped a piece of fencing away from its post and motioned for Evelyn to step through, which she did, smirking at Jake. David threw Jake up and stepped through the opening.

Evelyn watched as Jake got scratched on the fence on his way down. She smiled. She loved the feeling of protection, but took off down the alleyway as soon as David was through to escape the scene of the crime. David gave Jake one final smirk before turning around and following Evelyn at a fast pace to keep up with her, letting Jake know their business wasn't over. Jake tripped down the side street out onto the main boardwalk along with his goons before the cops got there.

David caught Evelyn as she hurried out the other side of the alley, holding her hat on her head. "Hey," he said. "Be cool." He smiled at her and pulled her along in the direction of the boys.

Paul laughed out loud when he saw Evelyn in that big black hat coming down the boardwalk with David. Marko looked over at Paul's laughter and saw them and started laughing as well. Dwayne chuckled darkly to himself.

"What," she said, "you don't like my hat?"

"Why are you wearing that?" asked Paul, flipping it off her head and catching it.

"I like it! It keeps the sun off my face during the day," Evelyn answered.

Marko took the hat and put it on his head. "Do you like it? Hmm?" he asked.

Evelyn laughed at Marko. He was making a ridiculous face that only magnified the silliness of the hat on him.

Paul took the hat back from Marko and put it on his head. "What about me?" Paul looked even more ridiculous because of his wild hair spilling out from underneath the hat.

"It looks like a flattened, black sombrero," said Marko. "Where did you get it?"

Evelyn shrugged. "Some bargain basement or another. C'mon, give me back my hat. Can we get back to the cave? I have to drop this stuff off," she said, motioning towards her basket. Inside were some various food and drink items.

"Can you go by yourself?" asked Paul. "We got some… uh… business to take care of."

Evelyn looked at the pack of boys and noticed Marko was looking around, liking his lips, and that the other boys looked a bit more anxious than usual. "Sure, I brought my car. You guys take care of business," business was their word for feeding when they were around other people, "and I'll take this stuff back. Meet you at the benches by the carousel."

Later Evelyn sat on the benches, eating Dip 'n' Dots and waiting for her boys. She looked around, afraid of seeing more brave boys like Jake. She felt two strong hands on her shoulders and jumped. She looked up and saw David, and smiled as David took the cigarette out of his mouth and blew the smoke upwards. She never heard him come up.

"You okay?" he asked, noticing her reaction.

"Yeah," she said getting up. "I was just afraid of Jake coming back when you were gone." They joined The Boys walking down the boardwalk, enjoying the energy.

"Jake's not going to be a problem anymore," said David coolly, never altering his gaze or his step.

Evelyn looked at him. "Don't tell me you had business with him?"

David looked at her, blowing smoke and smirked just a bit, saying nothing.

"Oh, for that? That was nothing. I thought you were after… what's his name, the big guy from the bar?"

"He," said David, "can wait his turn."

"Oh," said Evelyn. She was still getting used to the idea of David killing people. It was weird the way it was. It was like it wasn't even a part of their lives. He just went out, came back, sometimes a little messy, cleaned up and they went out and had a wild time. She had never really experienced the absence of anyone the Boys had "business" with. She didn't even have names or faces for them usually. When she did it was just like… well you just never saw that person again, and with so many people on the boardwalk, it was easy for the brain to imagine that they were still around, just not nearby. It reminded Evelyn of the Happy Farm her hamster had gone to one time while Evelyn was on a Girl Scout campout. The people just went away. Jake just went away, just like Freddy the hamster. She knew she had to deal with it, so she tried to wrap her head around it. It was hard to, even though she had seen David kill that man on the highway that night, but that night seemed so far away in her memory. She didn't like to think of those days she spent with Isabel and her gang. "Where is he?" asked Evelyn, trying to make her brain understand.

"What?" asked David, a note of surprise in his voice.

"Jake, where is he now? Where did you put him?" Evelyn asked.

"I, ah, put him in the ocean. He's swimming. Jake has gone for a good, long swim," said David, joking darkly. David was trying to ease over the situation. He was afraid that if Evelyn knew too much about it, about him and what he did, she would try and leave. David knew that if she tried to leave him he would have to kill her. If he didn't, Max would. Why did he even have to get himself into this? David hated being worried and afraid for any reason.

"No, really…" said Evelyn, knowing David was pulling something.

David stopped their brisk pace along the nighttime's boardwalk, looking at her, leaning close. "Really. I went out and dropped him in the ocean. The fish and whales and sharks will eat him. He's dead, Evelyn."

"What if he washes up?" she said, matching David's quiet tone as they were in public where anyone could hear. A sudden pang of fear struck her.

"He won't. I dropped him out too far." David sighed, smelling Evelyn's fear. "Evelyn, I've been doing this here for almost thirty years now, and even more time before I was in Santa Carla. _I know what I'm doing_. I'm not the twenty-year-old boy you think I am." He was annoyed that she thought he would be making mistakes. He was far too old to get caught these days. He didn't have to worry about himself. If there was anyone he would have to be worried about it would be Paul, the youngest, or second youngest, next to Evelyn, if she chose that path. Paul had been a vampire for nearly twenty years now. He didn't have to worry. It was Evelyn he had to be concerned about now.

Evelyn clenched her teeth and put her hands in her pockets. "I know you're not twenty years old, David. I know about your past. Hell, your past came and kidnapped me and kept me locked up for three days. Is there a better way for me to become acquainted with your past than listening to its stories for three nights?" she said bitterly.

David knew there _was_ a better way to get to know him and his past, but he wouldn't mention it here, so he said nothing.

Paul, Marko, and Dwayne were walking silently forward with them, pretending not to hear their miniature fight. "C'mon," said David, turning around and walking backwards in front of her. "Let's have some fun."

Evelyn smiled and sped up, catching up with the rest of The Lost Boys. She didn't want to fight any more than David, so she let it go. "What are we gonna do?" she asked.

"What we always do!" said Marko.

David smiled mischievously at Evelyn. "Whatever," he said.

Evelyn loved these nights. They just hung out and screwed around on the boardwalk, messing with people, chilling out. David was right, they did whatever. It was all good.


	4. Chapter 4 Death By Fluorescents

Chapter 4- Death By Fluorescents

It was one a.m. Cathy stared out at the boardwalk through the window. At this hour there was a steady trickle of people coming into McDonalds for their slabs of "meat" and "lettuce" on "bread". She put it in quotes in her head because in her mind, that stuff shouldn't even qualify as a food product, and this was coming from a girl who drank nothing but fresh human blood. Obviously, her ideas of sustenance were pretty low, by human standards.

She was thinking about her birthday. It was next week. She was going to be seventeen. It was her first birthday as a vampire. It was all going to be different. Before, she would sleep in as late as she wanted, and when she woke up, by the time she showered and brushed her teeth, a chocolate chip pancake breakfast would be awaiting her on the kitchen table, smiley-face on top pancake included. She'd always eat the cherry nose first, and tie the stem into a knot in her mouth. She always thought that was a neat trick. She'd open her presents and play with them until lunch-time, when they would pack a picnic with her birthday cake as dessert and eat on the beach. Then they'd go to the boardwalk and she could stay as long as she wanted, riding the rides and playing the games on the midway and in the arcades, and then—

Somebody rapped their nails on the counter. "Hello?" It was David's pretty girlfriend.

"Oh, hey, sorry," said Cathy, emerging from her thoughts. "I was… just… um, what did you say again?"

"Can I get two Big Macs, a McRib, four large French fries and one medium French fry, three large chocolate milkshakes, a large vanilla milkshake, and a medium strawberry milkshake?" asked Evelyn.

Cathy punched in the order. "Are the rest of them coming in?" asked Cathy, hoping they would.

"Yup," said Evelyn. "They're just parking their bikes and…" Evelyn turned around and looked out the window at the sounds of yelling. All of McDonald's watched as Dwayne and Marko hung a young man upside down off the edge of the boardwalk. "Hang on a minute," said Evelyn, as she walked outside. "Hey! Wha'd he do? Put him down and come in and get your food!"

David laughed at the young man's face as he struggled for something to hold onto lest the boys drop him. He leaned over the railing and spoke the young man, laughter still in his voice. "She wants us to put you down. Do you want to go down?"

The young man somehow knew that the "down" David meant was not the sturdy planks of the boardwalk. He shook his head, making a fearful "Nuh uh," as David stood laughing behind him.

Evelyn was at David's side now. "David," she said exasperatedly. She wanted her milkshake and to sit and hang out and not have to stiff Cathy because they had to run off from the police. She reached down and grabbed the young man by his shirt. "What did you do?" she asked angrily. She was hoping they could just resolve this quickly and get on their way. The man just made fearful noises, still recovering from his recent hang off the boardwalk. Evelyn had no patience. Her food was on order and she had not paid yet. "What did you do!"

"Nothing!" cried the man.

"Then how did you end up hanging head first off the boardwalk, hm? They wouldn't have touched you unless you did something to provoke them." she said.

He just made noises, starting to say something, to give some explanation.

"He tried to pickpocket us," said David coolly.

"You dumbass!" said Evelyn to the man. "Don't you think you should at least SEE who you're pickpocketing before you stick your hands into their pockets? I mean, how long you been here? I've only been here a couple weeks and I know that!"

"A—a couple days," said the man.

"Well, now you know. Thief, meet The Lost Boys. Lost Boys, meet thief. Now, if you want to keep all your bones as they ought to be, you'll go find some nice tourist to pick on. Now leave," she said, throwing the man roughly away from her.

"_Hijos del Diablo! Y la mujer tambien!_" shouted the man as he scampered away. It translated to "Sons of the devil! And the woman too!"

The Lost Boys laughed, leaning up against the boardwalk railing, watching the man stumble away in fright.

Evelyn turned to David. "Now give me the money."

"What money?" asked Marko.

"To pay for—" said Evelyn, but Marko spoke before she could finish.

"How did you know we took his money?" he asked.

"—our food," finished Evelyn. "Ha! You took his money?"

"You took his money?" asked David.

"Yup," said Marko.

"Mm," said David, nodding in approval. "Nice work. How much?"

Marko took the money out of his pocket and handed it to David, counting it. A-hundred-fifteen bucks, plus plastic."

"Hmm, he's been working the boardwalk for a while tonight," said David, taking the cash and tossing the credit cards off the boardwalk. He began walking towards the entrance. "The cards are useless. They are good for big purchases but if you get caught there'll be a shakedown. They'll have our pictures from the security cams on file and yadada, witch hunt. People are getting serious about identity theft these days. Gotta be careful," said David, looking at the group seriously. "Remember, we can't get picked up." They were standing in front of the McDonald's counter now.

"Yeah," said Cathy. "They made this Lifetime movie about it and they made it seem all dramatic like the woman was trying to BE the other woman, as opposed to just using her credit card like a normal person." The Boys turned to look at her in surprise. They hadn't realized she was in the conversation. Cathy realized she had just butted in. 'Damn,' she thought. She didn't want to seem like an idiot in front of them, especially Paul. Fortunately, she hadn't fed much in a while, only drinking a glassful of blood before she went to work, and the same yesterday. She needed about a gallon of blood a night (the equivalent of one person), and she could only slip out and take a whole person roughly once a week. Hence, she didn't have a lot of blood in her system, making it impossible for her to blush. If vampires could blush. She wasn't actually sure. Then she realized she had basically just admitted to watching Lifetime and felt like she might faint. That could also be because she was malnourished.

No one said anything. Evelyn handed Cathy a twenty and Cathy produced the amount of change the computer had specified. "Here's you're change," she said quietly, staring fixedly at the green plastic countertop "Have a nice night." She pulled her McDonald's uniform visor down low over her eyes and wished she could disappear into it.

Cathy watched the boys eat, or she did as best she could without seeming suspicious. She liked looking at Paul, even when he was doing mundane things like eating two Big Macs. She watched him drink that shake and thought about kissing him.

For the second time that night somebody rapped their fingernails on the counter, but this time it was Taisha, leaning up against the counter, tapping her electric lime green nails with a miniature rhinestone on each one to get her attention. "Don't get too in love, girl," she said.

Cathy was glad she couldn't blush again. "I'm… not—"

"Oh, but you are," said Taisha playfully. "Now, tell my which one again?"

"Paul," Cathy whispered.

"Paul," said Taisha, thinking.

"Shhh!" said Cathy, afraid he would here.

"Oh, you shh! Now how am I supposed to know their names? Which one is Paul?" she asked.

"Long blonde hair," whispered Cathy.

"Curly?" asked Taisha, looking.

"No, wild…" answered Cathy.

"Oh _that_ one!" said Taisha. "Mm, he's cute, but dangerous," she said suddenly scolding. "Don' you get involved with none of them." Then she went back into the back of the store.

"Don't worry," said Cathy softly. "I won't." Cathy knew she could never actually be with Paul. Apart from him being way out of her league, she realized she was a vampire now. She couldn't have a boyfriend. She was too busy thinking about killing people to deal with having a boyfriend. What if she hurt him? No, no, no. Baaaad idea. Cathy mentally slapped herself. 'I must not think bad thoughts,' she thought.

McDonald's was always the last thing to close on the boardwalk. Cathy stepped out the back and walked around until she was on the main boardwalk. She preferred the main part to the back alleyways, even if both were equally deserted. Even if she was undead.

She walked down the boardwalk. Her car was parked in one of the lots farther down where you paid five dollars for twenty-four hour parking. She passed the deserted shops and saw the carousel. It was one of the few things where some of the lights never turned off. The blinking bulbs around the edges stayed on day and night, despite the fact that it wouldn't be open for rides for many hours. She saw the painted horses, frozen in mid-gallop. Walking closer, she heard noises. As she walked passed it she saw The Lost Boys, hanging around on the opposite side of the carousel that she had come from. Well, at least three of The Lost Boys. Paul, Dwayne, and Marko sat lazily side-saddle on horses and benches laughing. As she approached she noticed the pungent smell of marijuana being passed around. They turned and looked at her, not understanding why she was standing there ('probably looking like an idiot,' she thought).

"Hey," she said, hoping she sounded cool. She really, really wanted to sound cool, collected, and confident. 'Yeah,' she thought. 'Cool, collected, and confident. That's it,' and took a deep breath and put on her best cool, collected, and confident face. 'Sexy couldn't hurt either,' she thought, but she didn't know how to throw sexy into the mix. Trying to be three adjectives was hard enough.

"Hey," they all said. They were still giving her that look.

"I… just got off work," said Cathy, motioning towards McDonald's.

"Riiight. Open late," said Paul.

"Yeah. Where's the other one, David?" she said, pretending that she didn't know David immediately by name. She figured it was cooler that way, pretending like they meant nothing to her. Nope, nothing at all. If any of them wanted her they were going to have to come and get her. Maybe she's too cool to be paying to much attention to them, and it's definitely uncool to be paying as much obsessive attention as she had. Not knowing them immediately by name might disguise the whole stalker vibe she could be giving off.

Paul blew out the smoke, clearing his lungs to answer her question. He pointed to the side of the carousel she had just passed. "There," he said, voice rough from the recent smoke blast.

Cathy looked. At first from her angle she couldn't see anything out of the ordinary. Then she saw it: one platform leather boot with buckles running up the side and one coattail draped over one side of the bench. She suddenly became aware of the soft noises coming from the bench. There was no doubt about it. David and his pretty girlfriend were kissing. Intensely. "Oh," said Cathy.

Suddenly there was a soft, wet, sucking noise and Evelyn sat up. "Who's here?" she asked, a bit breathless as she blew a few stray dirty-copper colored strands of hair from her face, then running her fingers through it to fix its mussed look. "Oh, hi. Cathy, right?" she asked, disentangling herself from the mass of black-clad limbs inside the carousel bench. There was a sigh and then a soft thumping noise as David sat up, clearly put out at the interruption.

"Yeah, Cathy," answered Cathy.

"Cool. My name's Evelyn," she said. Evelyn stepped down from the platform onto the ground. David lounged back onto the bench and reached for a cigarette.

"Over here, man," said Paul, offering the joint.

"Good thinking," said David as he walked over, accepting the joint and taking a drag.

"Watcha doing?" asked Evelyn, leaning on the metal barrier that surrounded the ride, separating her and the boys from Cathy.

"I was just… walking to my… car," she said haltingly, motioning from the direction of her workplace to the parking lot. She found it kind of hard to think of words to say with Evelyn fixing her with her intense gaze and four attractive guys, one of which she had a major crush on, standing right there listening in. She wanted them to like her.

"Cool," said Evelyn, accepting the joint that David handed her over her shoulder from on the carousel platform. "Hey, this thing's almost burnt out!" she exclaimed looking at it then to the boys. She took a drag from the now short joint. "Last drag?" she asked Cathy, offering her the hand-rolled marijuana cigarette. Cathy shook her head. She had never smoked that much pot even when she was alive and still went to school. She had smoked it a few times at beach parties, but other than that not so much.

"Alright," said Evelyn and as she was about to take another hit Cathy said:

"Wait!" What did she have to lose now, right? The worst thing was death and she had already done that, right? Cathy extended her hand, took the joint, and breathed in deep, sucking in the last before it burnt her fingers. "What are my parents gonna do, kill me?" she said after blowing out the smoke, laughing at her little joke with herself. Evelyn laughed quietly. "What?" asked Cathy. How could Evelyn have gotten that?

"Parents," Evelyn responded. It occurred to Evelyn that she was the youngest there, that all of them probably didn't live with their parents.

"You took the last of it?" asked Marko accusingly, now leaning over the horse behind Evelyn. Cathy blushed, or rather, she would have if she could have. Instead she just looked at Evelyn's gigantic boots.

"You didn't leave us anything but the last of it," said Evelyn turning around and crossing her arms. She walked back up the platform, boots clunking, and looked back at Cathy, not giving any indication whether Cathy should scurry on home to her parents or come up and hang out. Cathy stood, frozen, thinking, and Evelyn turned back and sat on a horse next to David. Cathy watched them and realized that if there had been one, she had missed her chance. It was now time for her to go home. She was on the outside. 'For now,' she thought. If she could find some way to have friends while being a card-carrying member of the undead, she would have them as her friends. There was something about them that just drew her to them. It wasn't just her attraction to Paul, and that would have been enough, it was some sort of… something. Some sort of something. Quite descriptive, but she couldn't explain it.


	5. Chapter 5 Poachers

Chapter 5- Poachers

That night Cathy got home and parked her car. She walked into her parents' bed room and said, "I'm home," like she always did. She kissed them each goodnight in their half sleep and smelt her mother's tears. Some nights she cried. Cathy didn't have to wonder why. "I love you," she whispered, and went up into her room.

She dropped her keys on her nightstand and turned on some music, the Marie Antoinette soundtrack. She put on track five, Ceremony by New Order, and tried to relax. She stared blankly at her wall and thought. She had been doing this more often lately. She was now a pariah of society, doomed to feed from violence towards humans, except she didn't feel _that_ different. She felt confused, mostly, and sometimes afraid. She was confused about being a vampire. She didn't know anything and had nothing to guide her or tell her how. Everything seemed so new and wonderful but all she wanted to do was go out and eat someone. She was afraid of her new life. She sometimes felt unworthy, like a second tier person. She felt like all those basic human rights that some people were always going on about didn't apply. All men are created equal, the Constitution said, and people said that it meant women as well. What about vampires? Are they equal to a human or less? Or greater? Certainly not, humans just seemed so. . . lovely. Innocent? And sometimes terrible. Like that made sense. Did Cathy deserve the freedoms that the government had declared unalienable rights? Maybe the whole wide world would be better off if they locked her up in a secret facility in New Mexico for testing forever and ever.

She thought of The Lost Boys and her strange attraction to all of them, how she wanted to join them, to be one of them. She wished she had just stepped over that metal barrier and onto that platform. It all seemed so easy, now. Just walk up, a big smile and a hello, sit down on a horse and laugh with them. That's not so hard. Evelyn's look could very well have been an invitation. Hell, it probably had been. She'd probably been wondering if Evelyn had time and just expected her to follow if she did. What if she didn't say anything because she thought that if Cathy had to be home soon she didn't want to embarrass her by asking about a curfew when Evelyn and the boys so clearly had none? That was probably it. 'Oohh, it was right there and I threw it away!' moaned Cathy in her mind. It all made sense now, if all her what-ifs were true. She could be laughing with new friends now if she had just taken that step across that cheap, thin, metal barrier. It was all so easy. All so easy and she'd thrown it away.

Maybe it was better. Vampires can't have friends.

Can they?

Cathy's stomach grumbled and she rolled over, three tiny tears spilling from her. This sucked. "Quiet," she told her stomach. She got out of bed and walked up the stairs to the refrigerator and got out the empty milk gallon filled with a dark red liquid. She opened it and took several swigs, screwing up her face. Drinking the blood from the fridge always made her feel sick. Half from guilt and half because that stuff was just nasty. It was cold and stale. Stale. . . ? Did blood go stale? She didn't even know. She desperately wished for someone to ask.

Cathy shut the fridge and stood in the dark kitchen, though she could see fine. She was teetering on the edge of a decision. Should she leave and slake her thirst, or suffer for the good of everyone else? The vampire in her made the decision for her. Yes, it said, go. Feed. Drink what makes you better.

She walked to the door. She found her shoes in the hallway along the way and put them on. She took her jacket off the wall, turned the alarm off, unlocked the door, and slipped outside. She felt better instantly. Freer. She walked in the shadows cast by the bushes and fences of peoples houses, out of the light of the streetlamps. She walked quickly, but downtown was still a ways a way and it took her about thirty minutes to get there. The streets were mostly deserted at four in the morning in this area. It was perfect. She sat back among the garbage and stared predatorily out of the alley's mouth. A creepy looking man passed within the next ten minutes and he was jerked forcefully into the alley. She tore his neck open with her newly elongated teeth and sucked the life from him. She rubbed the place where she had bitten furiously with a cloth she carried in her pocket, frightened the DNA would show up somehow. She wasn't even in the system and. . . would they test for DNA with a bite like that? She had no idea. She wasn't a CSI lab worker, she was a sixteen year old girl that just happened to have uncontrollable cravings for fresh human blood was all.

She heard a bump somewhere down the street and took off. She never hid her victims. She didn't even think about it. She was usually so freaked she just ran like she did that night. She flew out the other end of the alleyway (figuratively. She hadn't been able to control her flying yet) and ran away.

She didn't want to go home yet, not when the night was calling. She smelt the city and the breeze and even the garbage seemed sweeter now that she was _out_. The night calmed her fears and as she walked everything seemed much simpler. She was _supposed_ to go out into the night, not stay cooped up in her room, or rot under the fluorescents of a fast food nightshift. She didn't need that money. The man back there had money! He was dead; she should have taken it.

'Stealing from a dead man? Isn't that, like, morally screwed?' some part of her asked herself. 'Especially a man I killed?' It was so scary to think of herself living that life. Robbing and killing her way through life… or unlife. Did she really want that?

She decided to head back to the boardwalk to see if The Lost Boys were there. As soon as she stepped near to the carousel on the boardwalk her nose told her there were no cigarettes burning on the carousel, but she hadn't learn to trust her vampire instincts yet. She circled the carousel. "Hello?" she called softly. Cathy climbed onto a painted dragon and looked out over the blue-black water of the Pacific Ocean. She wanted to revel in the night. She felt best, her senses were at their highest, and she wanted to stay in the night.

Parents just seemed like a dream from before. If she had realized, it would have frightened her how easy it was to forget her sleeping family, her parents and little eight-year-old brother Noah.

Evelyn looked at Cathy questioningly, wondering if she wanted to come and hang out with them. Cathy just stood there, saying nothing, so Evelyn turned back to The Boys and sat on a horse near David. After a moment she heard Cathy walk away. The wind blew off the ocean and she missed being near David. Though his body was usually colder than hers, it still felt good to be next to him. She walked over to the horse David was sitting sideways on and pulled herself up behind him. He wrapped one arm loosely around her waist, his other hand holding a cigarette.

Some time later they rode their bikes downtown to wonder around. The walked passed a Walgreens and Evelyn looked at it. "Let's go get candy," she said, looking at the all-night store.

"Hey guys," asked Marko. "does being in Walgreens ever make you want to steal stuff? Like randomly?"

"Yes!" said Paul. "I get that feeling all the time!"

Evelyn looked at them and shook her head. "C'mon. I want to get stuff."

Evelyn walked passed the hair section and thought about if she needed anything. She meandered through the aisle and saw the hair-dyes. She'd been thinking about dying her hair… maybe red. She grabbed a deep wine-red color and plunked it down in her basket amongst the Coca-Cola and Sour Patch Kids.

She saw David loitering suspiciously nearby the cashier, who looked like he was about to call the cops. The way David was looking at him probably wasn't helping.

"Camels…" said David to the man. His voice was quiet and cold.

"Uh… ID?" asked the cashier, reaching for the cigarettes.

David looked at the man and Evelyn wondered if he was going to do something. What, she didn't know. That was up to David, but David simply reached into his pocket and pulled out an ID and handed it to him along with a ten. A _fake_ ID, since if David had a real ID the date of birth would be in the eighteen-hundreds. It was a good fake ID though and the cashier handed it back to him with his cigarettes and change.

Evelyn stepped up and put her basket down. Paul stood behind her looking sketchy. When the man looked at the computer ring Evelyn up Paul swiped a handful of lighters. Evelyn looked at him, eyebrows raised, smirk in place. Paul jerked his head towards the cahier, who was now holding out her change. As he put her things in a plastic bag Evelyn reached up and took a black plastic lighter, grinning conspiratorially at Paul.

They walked out of the store, Dwayne and Paul going past the counter. By the time they were out the door, there were no more lighters at the check-out.

Around the corner Evelyn noticed Marko drinking a beer. "You smuggled a whole beer?" she asked, impressed.

Marko grinned that magic choirboy grin and toasted her.

"What else did you guys lift?" she asked, half amused, half bored with their antics. It was like something she used to do in her hometown 7-11 when she was fifteen.

Marko and Paul emptied their pockets. Gum, small snacks, and even another two beers made themselves known. Paul even produced a National Enquirer from the back of his coat. "Why in god's name would you get _that_?" asked David, motioning towards the magazine.

Paul just shrugged. "It called to me," was all he said.

"Kleptomaniacs," said Evelyn.

"Here," said Marko, holding out his hand. Paul handed him the magazine and Marko took out one of the stolen lighters. He then lit the magazine on fire and as the flames consumed it, tossed it into a nearby trashcan. "Whooooo!" he yelled, arms up in triumph.

Evelyn stepped back, laughing. She looked around for any cops or bystanders who might lead to cops. David laughed at the used but amusing prank. An empty glass bottle inside the trashcan exploded from the heat and The Lost Boys took off running.

The boys and Evelyn walked down the street laughing. They passed an alleyway and David sniffed the air. He took a step into the alleyway and sniffed again. He smelt death. Not only did he smell death, but he smelt death, an open wound, and not a lot of blood. Years of killing had trained his nose to the scent of a kill. David stepped farther into the alleyway and the boys followed him, smelling what he was smelling. Evelyn followed behind uncertainly. "What is it?" she asked, not understanding why they had stopped. She smelt the garbage, but the kill was too fresh to reach her nose.

David held up a hand. She stopped for a second but then edged forward, curious. "Stay back," said David. Underneath the familiar scent of death was the lingering scent of another vampire. "Dwayne, take her back to the street and stay with her," he ordered seriously.

"What—" asked Evelyn, not wanting to wait while the boys explored something.

David moved and saw what he smelled. A dead body laid among the trash bags. It had been exsanguinated, drained completely of blood. David looked sharply up to where Dwayne and Evelyn were standing and told Dwayne with is expression that she should not come down here. "Take her back to the cave," said David quietly, examining the body. Dwayne stood frozen, knowing what was in the alley. "I said take her back to the cave, Dwayne!" he said more sharply.

Dwayne turned and pulled Evelyn by the elbow. He walked her quickly to his motorcycle and got on it. "What is it, Dwayne?" she asked on the way to the bike. Dwayne said nothing. "Dwayne?" tried Evelyn again. She gave up after that. Dwayne could outlast eternity when it came to silence. Of all of them, he was the least likely to talk, especially if it looked like David didn't want her to know much about it right then. He drove her back to the cave and waited outside the opening to their home to wait for the others' motorcycles. This was important.

Back at the cave David sat seriously in his wheelchair, staring intensely into a fire that was burning in a barrel nearby.

"What was it?" asked Evelyn. Obviously this was sensitive and pushing it might not be best.

David didn't even look at her. He just shook his head in a small quick motion.

Evelyn didn't want to push things but just waving her away without even looking at her ignited a spark in her. "David! What was in the alley?" David said nothing. "David!" she spoke his name louder this time.

David lazily spun one wheel so he was facing her. Evelyn had long gotten used to the oddness of David in a wheelchair. "A corpse…" he said. His voice was like a growl, but not at her.

Evelyn looked at David seriously. A regular murdered corpse? She doubted it. A vampire's kill? Perhaps. "What…" she said softly, urging him to continue.

"Someone drained it. Someone inexperienced and stupid. It wasn't any of us, I know that, and it wasn't Max… or…" he trailed off, still thinking.

"What does this mean?" asked Evelyn, wondering what the consequences would be.

"Poaching…" said David softly.

Evelyn blinked at the strange word. It just wasn't something you heard in normal conversation. "Poaching?" she asked.

"Well, this is either a sign that there's a newly turned and uninstructed vampire in town, or there's a new vampire—or even a pack of them—and they're challenging our dominance. They would have hunted on our territory, and left it out in the open for us to find. They want our hunting grounds."

"Will they come here?" asked Paul. The whole pack was listening in.

"I don't know. It could just be some newbie who doesn't know how to hide a meal… but they're sire would have told them how to do that, and anyways if they're here their sire probably is as well. I think for now we have to assume there's a poaching pack. They'll be rebels, otherwise they would have gone through the higher-ups," said David, the last part to the boys more than Evelyn.

"Higher-ups like Max?" asked Evelyn, not knowing what David was talking about.

David looked at her. There was more he hadn't told her. If he told her more, it would up the importance of her being turned or killed soon. He figured that they were already in so deep that he might as well just tell her. "Vampires have always had a nature to unite. We either want to be in a group—a pack or gang or coven, which is the old word—or be a loner, completely away from other vampires. That's harder since it's easier to defend your territory when there are more of you. Usually a loner will seek the protection of a Head Vampire. They'll owe a vague allegiance to him or her and defend them if another Head Vampire tries to poach on their territory, but really exist on their own. The size of a group of vampires varies. There are covens with hundreds of vampires living in one area—I don't see how they feed without killing everyone—and some like us with just four." David paused, thinking of where to begin. It was a big history, but he didn't have time to explain it all out for her.

He rested his fingertips together in a steeple shape and continued. "So there used to be just this loose tribal existence. You were made by a vampire and you owed them allegiance and they might owe someone else allegiance and eventually you'd get to the Head Vampire of the area. So eventually the tribes started wanting to expand—this was like BC—and they tried to take over other tribes and some succeeded, and then the defeated tribe would be marked by the Head Vampire of the winning tribe. This happened until covens formed. Each area would have a reigning coven that controlled a bunch of smaller former-tribes. As the world progressed, so did the system of vampires, which remained secret. As pieces of the world became more modern, so did the system. As the Roman Empire spread, the smaller covens in that area united, and they owed allegiance to a coven in Rome. When Europe had its Renaissance, the covens started uniting and creating truces. It was a bureaucracy. You owed allegiance to someone and they owed allegiance to someone and so on up the system until you got to a Head Vampire. Head Vampire is a really loose term. I'm the Head Vampire of this group, but Max is Head Vampire of this area—from San Francisco to LA, actually—and he has other packs for his other cities, but he answers to someone else. I don't know who, but that vampire might be the Head Vampire of California, or maybe even of the whole West Coast and then some. He'll answer to a head of a bigger region until you get to the Head Vampire of America, who I know owes allegiance to a Head Vampire in Britain. It goes up and up and up, like government."

"Is there a Head Vampire of the world?" asked Evelyn. She had wondered about other vampires, since The Lost Boys and Max couldn't be the only ones, but had never thought of some sort of secret alliance of the undead.

David laughed. "That would be like there being World Peace. No, there's just really, really powerful Head Vampires. Like, the Head Vampire of Britain or the Head Vampire of the Roman Coven—they control Italy and the surrounding parts of Europe—or Head Vampire of Eastern Asia. They have loose alliances, like truces. The British Coven won't attack the Roman Coven. They just keep to themselves."

"So all American vampires answer to the British vampires?" asked Evelyn.

"No, actually, they don't. Most do, but there are some smaller ones who answer to a different coven like France or Russia. Many vampires in New Orleans's covens answer to larger French covens in Europe. The French covens have a loose association with the other European covens, but… I don't know… they're kind of, well, French." David smiled wryly. Evelyn wondered what his experience with the French covens were. David's face became serious again. "The French Revolution really rocked the balance of power there, vampires included, but I'm getting away from the point."

"What are rebels then?" asked Evelyn, drawing him back to situation at hand. David wasn't usually long-winded in his speech. Evelyn got the impression that he knew a lot he wasn't saying, things he would never reveal on his own. If you asked a question, he would answer. Mostly. But if you didn't ask, Evelyn doubted David would come out with it "in his own good time".

"Ah, rebels. Those are the small covens of vampires with no allegiance to any Head Vampire other than the Head of the pack. Isabel's pack is a rebel coven. Technically, I'm her sire which could mean she's Max's through me, but when I made her I was technically not a Childe of Max yet. Even if I was, she rejects my authority, Max's authority, and my original sire's as well."

"Do you think it's her again?" asked Evelyn. She did not want to go through that again.

David straightened up. "No. If it was she wouldn't be doing this. She'd come back and fight us directly. It's someone else."

"What makes you sure it's a rebel coven?" asked Evelyn.

"If it was part of The Big System then it wouldn't be them versus us it would be Head Vamp against Head Vamp. It's all about rank. We're technically Max's lackeys and if there was some arrangement to be made depending on how serious the business was another Head Vampire of a different region would send his lackeys to either us or Max and blah blah blah. I hate this bureaucratic stuff." Evelyn could tell David was bored with her questions. "They would have tried to do it through business first. Max would have warned us. Just straight poaching is what the rebel covens do."

"What are we going to do?" asked Marko.

"First we have to tell Max. That's what we're supposed to do." David said supposed with a certain hint of disgust. Evelyn thought that David resented having to answer to someone, even if only from time to time.

"Then?" asked Paul. His expression was rapt and Evelyn wondered if he was frightened that someone was trying to take away his home. She looked around the room. Dwayne looked stoic, but determined. Marko was watching David, a similar gleam of determination in his eyes.

"Then… we have to do whatever Max tells us," said David quietly, a hard tone in his voice. "It's late, we'll tell him early next night." David got up. "Evelyn, stay here. Don't leave the cave today—"

"How will they get me during the day?" asked Evelyn, who resented being told to do anything, even if it was for her protection.

"They won't, but they'll follow your scent back here if they saw you with us," answered David


	6. Chapter 6 A New Quarry

Chapter 6- A New Quarry

Evelyn woke up around two. It was hot that day, and she kicked the covers off the bed. She got up and walked around the cave, trapped by David's law. She lay down on one of the couches and stared off into space. She tried to read something, but was too restless. She crawled back under the covers in hopes that she could sleep through the hours of boredom.

While her eyes were shut trying to coax her brain into sleeping Evelyn's mind whirred with thoughts of David and vampires. She was one of them, their special favorite human girl, but she thought about what would happen if David offered her his blood and the chance to be a vampire. Visions of The Lost Girls—they're little gang wasn't named that since it didn't have a name, but that's what Evelyn's thoughts had dubbed it—floated through her frustrated brain. They were her only model of vampire women. She pictured herself, even stronger and more confident than she was now, like Isabel, Dolly, Val, and Inky had been. They lived forever, they reeked of sexiness, and got what they want. They had an air of awesomeness about them and Evelyn thought she would like to be like that. Awesome. No one could refuse them. The confidence from knowing they had powers beyond the average human visible in their eyes and their manner.

Evelyn thought about it. She would exist in a state that was a step up from the rest of humanity. She would exceed far and beyond the normal, the average expectations. She would live a life no one ever expected, one that no one ever dreamed about. The idea of the power of being a vampire tingled through her and she smiled. Wonderful. She would be that much closer to David as well.

But thoughts of death and destruction broke through Evelyn's daydreams of the fabled, seemingly Utopia of vampirism. She would have to kill. She'd never killed anything before. She'd always thought she'd never hurt anyone like that, not for anything. And with being "a step above the average" she would also be isolated. She thought of her families. Holidays rushed through her mind. How would she celebrate with her family? She would only be able to come at night. She thought of everything she would miss. She thought of her friends. They seemed a million miles away now. Though she didn't know it, already she was feeling the effects of a vampire's amnesia. The words "life is but a dream" never held more truth. She thought of what she had lost for the first time in weeks now and felt like she was going to cry.

In her sadness another thought reared its head in her brain. Why hadn't David offered her the blood yet? Was he just using her, a temporary comfort, waiting for her to just disappear by herself, her mortal death taking care of the problem? 'He's going to watch you die,' whispered the doubting and afraid part of her.

Thoughts swirled around behind Evelyn's forehead, causing a tension in behind her eyes. Her head hurt from all this stress. Evelyn sat up, walking over to a cooler where she got a water bottle and got some of the Advil she had bought last night at Walgreens. She saw the hair dye and looked at it. She was going to talk to David about it first, not really to ask his permission, but more to warn him. The rawness from the doubt she had experienced earlier now made her feel that he could deal with her red hair. It wasn't a big deal. If he had a huge problem with it he could say something, and maybe she'd consider dying it another color.

Evelyn walked back through the tunnels to a place where she knew there was a spring, the water filtering through the rocks, ridding it of its ocean salt and pollution. She sat down there with a lantern and a mirror and began to follow the instructions in the box.

David pulled on his gloves as he stood on Hudson's Bluff. He looked out at the lighthouse while he waited for his boys to get up here and get on their bikes. As usual whenever there was a quiet moment, David's disquieted brain would fill it with thoughts of Evelyn, her death, and her possible rebirth. He didn't want her to die, but he was still afraid of how people changed after they turned. They forget their mortal life. Well, forget in a sense. It just all turned into something like a dream. The myths of sunshine and your mortal friends and family seem like an old story someone told you. David had never heard of a vampire who tried to live out their life as they had. They all moved away to start a new life.

David had tried to salvage Isabel from his old life, and look how that turned out. It only drove her away.

David had also never heard of any vampire keeping a mortal pet who knew of vampires, at least not one that wasn't bound by any sort of blood bond, like a ghoul. Would David fade away in her mind as David's old family and friends had faded away in his? Would she run away like Isabel had? Would Evelyn love David as a vampiress? Maybe she only loved him because he seemed special, and when she was a vampire too he wouldn't seem special anymore.

Would David still love Evelyn?

A revving sound jarred David from his thoughts. David looked over his shoulder at his boys, eyes burning with their purpose. They would not let their territory be infringed. They would gladly hunt this poaching beast down and kill it where it stood. That was the only way to kill a vampire that was legal—or rather acceptable is a better word since the vampires didn't really have laws, more like guidelines that you could be punished for if you broke—because they were poaching rebels. They had no protection over them and they were breaking rules. These poachers would get the full monty: staked, decapitated, burnt to nothing, and then their ashes scattered. It was the only _truly one-hundred percent_ _reliable_ way to dispatch a member of the undead.

They arrived at Max's video store, where he was sure to be found at this hour. They walked around in the video store a bit to get his attention, then left swiftly to go around to the back. Max came in through the door marked private and saw them standing in his storeroom. They were forbidden to come here. "What are you doing?" asked Max, not pleased to see them.

"It's an emergency," said David, immediately explaining why they had trespassed on Max's rules.

"An emergency?" said Max, immediately alert. A million risks the boys were taking, any one of them could go wrong. Evelyn, Isabel and her pack, the police… all would fall under the category of emergency.

"Well… not an emergency right now," said David, not wanting Max to get worked up, "but it's a problem. An urgent problem that could become a very big problem."

"What?" asked Max, wanting David to get to the point.

"Poachers." Max stood up straighter and took a step forward. "At least that's what it looks like. We found a dead body—a vampire victim—lying uncovered in an alleyway downtown. It wasn't any of ours—"

"Did you hide it?" asked Max sharply.

"Yes. Dropped it off into the ocean like always," said David.

"Good," said Max, momentarily appeased.

"A newbie vampire doesn't seem very likely. Another vampire hasn't been in town in six months, not since we killed that drifter rogue you told us to kill. If there was someone with him… we would have found him by now. And if either of them had sired anyone they would have told them to cover the kill after they made the full turn."

"Never rule out the possibility of a fledgling. Things do happen, but I'd say this is what it looks like and it looks like poaching. Some rouge who wants Santa Carla is trying to send a message."

David's lips curled, his suspicions confirmed. Even at a time like this, it pleased him to be right. "What do you want us to do?"

"Track them down. Look for more kills. Be careful how you go, they'll know vampires are here but since they don't have any connections with the elders they won't know who or what we look like. Make sure they don't know it's you and definitely make sure they don't know about me. Hunt it down. If it's a pack, kill them all except for the leader. Bring him to me at my house. If it's only one do the same… and only to my house. I can't have you dragging bleeding hostages around in my alley and store," Max instructed.

The Lost Boys turned around. If their hearts could beat at all they would be pounding with the rush of hunting someone. Humans were all fun and good, but hunting vampires was the ultimate prey. Humans were so easy, and this was a challenge. The Lost Boys liked the challenge of it, defending their territory.

Just as they were almost all out the back door David turned around, the thought of Evelyn suddenly coming back. "Will Evelyn be safe from them?" he asked, turning around standing in the doorway. He didn't want to talk to Max about her, but Max would know, and Evelyn was important.

Max stood there, his face looking like he just remembered something. "No, keep her in the cave. While she's human she's extremely vulnerable. That reminds me: you boys begin the hunt. David, stay here a moment."

David reluctantly stepped back into the storeroom, leaning against a shelf, eyes narrowed. He was revved and ready to go kill something.

"David… I've been meaning to talk to you. I don't want you thinking I'm just making these demands about Evelyn to make things difficult for you, or because I don't like her. Let me explain. David, I think I know what's going on here. Situations like this have come up before. The first thing I want to ask you is, do you love Evelyn? Because the thing here is, is that just as many mortals become easily enamored of vampires, sometimes a vampire can become enamored by a mortal. It is their humanity we fall in love with. They are so innocent. Most humans have never killed anything. It's easy, David, to want to keep them… almost as pets, in a way… to live vicariously through them. They're so soft and they're so warm. In situations like these, well there's a name for this type of relationship. We call them bed-warmers. You can snuggle up with her during the day and she'll warm up your cold existence. I must say, Evelyn does have many classic personality traits of a bed-warmer. She is quiet, to a point. She doesn't really like to talk to anyone but you boys. She is loyal, and though she may be quiet she has a warm personality. And she's absolutely obsessed with you, David. This type of thing happens as vampires get older. You start to feel… detached from the current age. The world starts to look so strange and foreign, and there's nothing that reminds you of where you came from, nothing to remind you of a human life. Bed-warmers help a vampire to… reconnect. They help a vampire to feel more human and like they are a part of the world. However, the sad truth is that vampires do not love bed-warmers. What I mean is… they love them, they would never let them go, but they aren't 'in love', as in romantically. It's hard to tell these apart and vampires like yourself often get confused. Anyhow, the point here is, David, that I don't think you love her. I think she is there to warm your bed and provide to you the human comforts from which you feel so separated from."

David's eyes looked ready to pop out of his head. He had to fight hard to keep them from turning the fire-colors that they felt like. How dare Max talk about he and Evelyn like he knew_ so much _about it. Max was never there! How could he know?

"I sense," said Max slowly, "that you don't agree with me?"

David shook his head. "No. No I don't."

"Well, I want you to think about something. Would you still care for her when she is no longer human? When she is no longer your link to the human world?"

"Yes," he said. "You don't know anything."

Max was taken aback. "Well then, please, explain it to me David because this is the only thing I can think of!" said Max bitterly.

"I…" began David. He didn't want to admit this to Max. He _hated_ spilling to Max. He was going to say 'I'm afraid,' but then he realized he would rather die a thousand painful deaths than admit fear to Max. "I don't want her to change."

"Oh, yes, David." said Max, sarcastically. "That is what I was saying! But why?"

David glared. "Her personality. I don't want her to be different. I mean, I want her to stay with us, but I don't want her to change after she kills. I'm afraid—" David realized he had said those magic words, those terrible words. "—I don't want her to become cold like…" the word hung in David's mind. Max picked it out, a whisper in David's brain. '_Isabel_'.

"See, David! That's exactly what I'm saying! You want her to retain her human qualities but I can't let you do this! You're not ready for a Shadow—they're also referred to as Shadows or Ghouls—not while you're still camping out in that cave and roaring around the boardwalk. You have no house, no income to support yourself expect by stealing from your victims, how am I supposed to believe that you can handle taking care of a Shadow as they should be taken care of? They take a lot of time. They'll constantly seek your attention, they'll always seek your approval, they're addicted to being bitten and you have to mind you don't take too much. It really is like having a pet—"

David was angry now. Evelyn was not his bed-warmer, or his Shadow, or his pet. If Evelyn was here she would show Max that she wasn't. She would stand there, tall and proud, and look Max straight in the eye and lay it on him. Evelyn had a way with words that David had never mastered. David had a quiet power. "She's not…" said David quietly.

"What?" asked Max. He had been lost in his own words and not listening to David.

"She's not," said David firmly.

"No?" asked Max, not believing.

"She's her own person, plain and whole. She'll be her own person with or without my blood. Why are you so opposed to this?" asked David loudly.

"David, I am not opposed to you taking a wife. I'm pleased, really. It's a sign of maturity, but I want to make sure you pick someone you like as a vampire, not just because you are in love with humanity."

"In love with humanity," David mocked Max's words. "In love with humanity… I am not in love with humanity! I just like her how she is, is all!"

"I've seen her! She's a step above, she has a big heart, I can see the sunshine in her, and so can you and THAT IS WHAT YOU LOVE ABOUT HER! You take the sunshine out of her and you'll cast her off like an empty shell and that will break her. You can't treat women like that!"

"Sunshine? Let me tell ya, Evelyn is not the little ray of sunshine you think she is. Why are you doing this?"

"Because I don't think you love her, David. You don't love her."

"And what do you know?" David turned around to leave.

"David?" asked Max. "The choice is still there. You must turn her or kill her, there is no in between." David was in the doorway, back to the room, walking out. "She's vulnerable this way! If they get her, it will be on you for not preventing it!"


	7. Chapter 7 The Unwitting Rogue

Chapter 7- The Unwitting Rogue

Anger pounded in David's head like a drum, like a fever. He was angry that someone would dare poach on his territory, and angry that Max would dare tell him who he did and did not love. David didn't know what Max's twisted definitions of "love" were, but he knew he still wanted Evelyn to stay with him, to be in the cave with him. It had nothing to do with humanity or innocence, but with the fact that he was afraid that her loving him would fade like a memory. He was afraid that she would only love him as a sire, and that fades as a vampire grows older and more independent.

He didn't want the other vampires to hurt her. Max was right about that. If they got to her, she wouldn't last a minute.

David rode around, patrolling the usual areas, sniffing the air. He could smell it now. Faint traces around the boardwalk, being blown past his nostrils in the wind. He couldn't pinpoint anything because of the salty breeze scattering the scent. He went from parking lot to parking lot, sniffing the cars and bikes. Most just smelled like humans, leather, and gas.

In one of the boardwalk parking lots around midnight, David walked from car to car, breathing deeply by the drivers side of the cars. He looked like he was scoping out a car to steal. Several cops had given him a hard time, but he was too committed to his mission to remember them to get them later. He caught another whiff of scent. Vampire scent. Foreign blood scent. He moved from car to car. He caught another whiff, stronger this time. Had they been here? He caught the scent again standing in between a Jeep and an unobtrusive sedan. He sniffed all around the Jeep, but the smell got no stronger. The annoyingly yellow vehicle only smelled of humans and sweat. He looked at the sedan and sniffed near the door, where the owner definitely must have touched. A group of college kids passed him and laughed at him, but he didn't care. Whoever was driving this car was a vampire. He would wait and see who came to get in. He went across the street to a bar with a window, pulled up a chair, and ordered a beer. Anyone who said anything to him got the cold shoulder. He said he was waiting for someone.

It was getting late, and things were closing up. The bar was going to have its last call soon, and David had slowly worked his way through eight beers. They tasted thin to him, and the buzz never lasted long. The number of cars in the parking lot began to dwindle, but the sedan remained. Finally, there were about two cars left in the parking lot. The sedan, and a falling apart van. A group of drunk hippies came and piled into the van, leaving only the suspect car. The bartender gave the last call, and David paid his tab and left to stand in the alley, where he could still see. He didn't have to wait long. Not ten minutes later, he began to catch the scent and hear the footsteps of the approaching vampire. He didn't dare to walk out of the alley and see them. He heard them step over the low chain strung over poles that made the fence surrounding the parking lot and saw the sedan's vampire owner. David blinked in surprised. It was the McDonald's girl, Cathy. He stepped forward, out of the alley and hurried towards her.

She turned around. "Hey, David!" she called, waving to him. He wracked her mind as much as he could without her realizing it. She was a vampire. She had been turned six months ago by that rogue drifter. She drank mostly blood given to her by her parents out of a bottle in the fridge. She worked the night shift at McDonald's and hated it. She used to have a crush on him and had a crush on Paul? David made note of this. She thought Evelyn was nice. She lived with her parents. She was sixteen years old. She snuck out sometimes and took whole victims. Her parents didn't know. She was terrified they'd find out. David saw her parents' distance, her mother's tears, Cathy's freedom that she found in her late night excursions. He saw her fear and her longing for a new family. This was quite normal in vampires, to long for a pack or coven. Some were loners, but most wanted a companion, at least at first. He saw how she was drawn to The Lost Boys, and she didn't know why. It was her recognizing her own kind, but she didn't know it. She didn't know they were vampires.

David mentally smacked himself for not realizing she was a vampire, but her signal must have been so weak from not feeding enough. She didn't know how to use hardly any of her powers, and her scent was faint from, once again, malnutrition. She looked healthier now, still infused with some of last night's feed, and smiled at David, waiting for his reply, coming a few seconds too late. David nodded to her. "Hello Cathy," he said coolly.

"How ya doin'? Where's the rest of the gang?" she asked. He felt her internally blush because she was really asking 'Where is Paul?'

"Out looking for you," said David.

Cathy looked at him strangely. "Really?" she asked. He could feel her excitement. 'Paul is looking for me! He wants to see me!' she thought. "What's going on?"

Cathy didn't know what was going on. David looked so somber. He didn't have his characteristic smirk. He had been looking for her? They all had? What was that about. He didn't say anything to her question, just pulled at his gloves. She smelled him from where he was standing and, as always, felt like she should stay with him and his gang. Her senses heightened from her recent feed, she noticed how he smelt different from every other human's scent on the boardwalk. She couldn't describe it, it was just different. She wondered if all the boys smelt like that and she just had never noticed. She raised her eyebrows at him, trying to prompt an answer. His eyes darted around, still fiddling with his gloves.

It was then that he grabbed her. She wasn't sure what was going on at first, but suddenly she felt him up against her and he lifted her off the ground. She felt wind on her and looked around to see they were quickly flying upward. She yelled but David squeezed the air from her body. "I can't breathe," she croaked with the little air she could manage to squeeze out her throat.

"Ha," said David. "It's not like you need it. Vampire."

She didn't know what he was. Was he a vampire too? He was flying. Or were there even more types of beings she didn't know about. She hadn't known about the vampires, after all, and look how that turned out. She meant to ask him, but only a small croak came out. David smirked briefly, but it was strained.

They arrived at a cave to find Marko there. "I was nearby, searching the caves," said Marko, "and Dwayne was looking in the forests. He should be here soon." His eyes went wide when they saw Cathy. "What are you doing?" asked Marko. "Is she—" Marko stepped forward to get a closer look, and he smelled the vampire scent coming off her, and he saw the faint glimmer of red in her eye, brought out by her struggle against David. He realized that she must be the vampire they were looking for.

David pushed Cathy into one of the chairs. "Stay," he said, and moved away.

Cathy heard a noise farther back in the cave. Someone was coming from one of the tunnels. "David!" a voice called. It was David's pretty girlfriend, Evelyn. Cathy turned in the seat David had put her in and saw Evelyn looking around, brushing her hair out of her eyes. It was now a deep blood red. "David, are you alright?" she called, wondering what had happened while David was out.

David had turned sharply at Evelyn's first call. He moved towards her and was next to her in a matter of seconds. Evelyn strained forward, trying to hear what he was saying to her. She realized, to her surprise, that she could. "Go back! It's here, it saw you. Go back far into the caves and stay until I get you," David ordered.

She stepped back, David's hand placed firmly on her, pushing her. "David… I—" she said, unsure, when Marko stepped in front of Cathy and put his face up close to hers.

"It isn't nice to eavesdrop," he said.

"What…?" asked Cathy.

"But I guess you already know about her," said Marko, straightening up. He seemed excited, but not in his usually happy way. "How long have you been watching us?" he asked.

"I…" said Cathy, confused. David stepped out behind Marko, when seconds ago he had been at the other end of the cavern with Evelyn.

Then Paul and Dwayne arrived at about the same time. Dwayne came in first, and saw only part of the side of her face and her body, as she had her head turned away and she was not facing the door. He came around quickly to look at her, followed by Paul. Cathy turned towards them shyly. She felt like a traitor, somehow, though she didn't know what rules she had broken, and certainly didn't mean to upset the boys. For once, Dwayne's face made an expression, and Paul's mouth opened slightly, as if to say something, and his eyebrows went up. "You?" he asked. "You're the rogue?"

Dwayne reached out and moved her face—roughly—to face them better, turning it upwards, as if to confirm her identity. She jerked away. "You're all vampires?" she asked quietly. She was afraid. They didn't seem pleased to see her.

"Yes," said David stepping in front of her. He was clearly angry. "Can't you tell?"

"I… I don't understand," said Cathy. She didn't understand. What had she done? If they were vampires too, why were they mad at her for being a vampire?

"Are there any more?" asked David.

"Any more vampires?" asked Cathy. David nodded exasperatedly. "Uh, are there? I mean, I didn't even know there were you guys, so… well… I don't know anything." She was just finding out there had been more than two vampires in the state of California. It seemed like a question she should be asking them. She decided she should. "Well are there?" she asked.

David seemed frustrated. "Who's your sire?" he asked.

"My what?" she asked. Sire? Who used that word?

David looked at her more intensely. He almost seemed sympathetic now, amid his frustration, like someone is around a retarded person. Slow movements and speech. "Who… made… you… a… vampire…" he asked, speaking exaggeratedly slowly.

"I can hear fine, thank you. It's you using the weird words," said Cathy. After she spoke her eyes went wide and she shut her mouth quickly. She probably shouldn't sass them since they were in a position to hurt her. She opened her mouth again, minding her tone. "I don't know. This guy, I guess. He gave me a drink at a party. I don't know who he is. Never saw him again."

All the boys were smiling now, though they weren't kind. Laugh at the retarded vampire! She doesn't know a sire from a childe! She wouldn't recognize another vampire if it walked right up to her and ordered a chocolate shake! Cathy guessed that they realized that she was just blundering about, and not there to threaten them or whatever they thought she was going to do.

"So you're not looking to run Santa Carla?" asked Marko.

"You mean like City Counsel?" asked Cathy. This was so confusing! All the boys laughed. Apparently that's not what Marko had meant. "I wasn't watching you," said Cathy, remembering Marko's accusation of spying from before Paul and Dwayne had arrived. "I didn't know—" she said, but was cut off by David.

"Oh, you were watching," said David, mock serious, and Cathy saw him jerk his head to Paul.

Cathy blushed. Or she felt like she would have been blushing, if she wasn't undead, and instead just felt her insides writhe, squirm, and shrivel up and die with embarrassment. David knew. Cathy looked down at the ground, moving the dirt around at her feet with her white Keds, angling her head so her flat, blonde hair would cover her face.

David watched Cathy as she squirmed under his last accusation of "watching". This would teach her quickly that she couldn't hide things from him. David's anger had abated, and now he was in a surprisingly good humor. He walked towards the back of the cave where Evelyn had previously disappeared and called for her. She came out slowly, obviously still cautious. He noticed her hair was red now, which he hadn't before in his concentration on the problem at hand. She hadn't said anything about dyeing her hair… but it wasn't a bad change. It brought out the strange red tone in the brown of her eyes. "You dyed your hair today," said David.

"I did," said Evelyn, and he could hear the tone of defiance in her voice. She had done it on her own and possible hadn't told him about it on purpose. David wondered why, but chose to examine this fact later.

"Come see who we found," and he walked back down towards the chair where Cathy sat nervously.

"Cathy?" Evelyn called when she saw her, and ran forward, but slowed when she remembered how whatever the boys had gone out to get was supposed to be dangerous.

Cathy met Evelyn's eyes for a brief moment and then looked at Evelyn's boots. She was still feeling very uncomfortable.

Evelyn stepped forward. "What?" she asked, trying to piece this together. "Are you a…" she trailed off, not wanting to say vampire in case she wasn't, because it would give the boys away.

Paul put his face close to Cathy's and said "Look at our rogue!" He laughed and moved away. Apparently he found the situation hilarious.

Cathy's stomach did flips at the proximity of Paul's face to hers, but tried to keep her face emotionless. David laughed. He knew, even if Paul did not.

"It seems," said David, walking slowly around Cathy's chair, "that our rogue vampire, Cathy," he motioned to her, "was unaware that there were other vampires… at all. Her sire has apparently abandoned her, leaving her knowing absolutely nothing."

Cathy felt that saying she knew "absolutely nothing" was going a bit far, but she was still afraid. The Lost Boys were no longer threatening her, and wanted to keep it that way. The strange incense-like smell that all the boys had was strong in the cave, and gave Cathy a sense of familiarity and she didn't know where it was coming from. The smell seemed to spell out "home" for her instincts.

Cathy watched David walk up to Evelyn and mutter something. She was surprised she could hear it, but not so surprised since she had been able to hear and see things she shouldn't have been able to for months. "I'm going to talk to Max," he said. "I want to talk to you when I get back."


	8. Chapter 8 A Bigger, Stronger Pack

Author's Notes: Okay, sorry about the delay. It's just something really important is about to happen and I had to get it right so I had to think about it. Also, I went out of town. I was in and out of town all summer. I've also been lazy. Laziness and indecisiveness are a deadly combination, mind you. Anyhow, I've been getting a lot of questions about when Evelyn's going to be turned. Well, Evelyn being turned or not turned is sort of the main plot point of this story, but I can guarantee you that you will have your answer in the chapter after this one that you are about to read. I thought it was going to be in this one, but things didn't work out that way. However, Cathy joining the pack was going to act as a catalyst for David's decision so I needed that to be solid. All right? Are we cool? Here it is:

Chapter 8- A Bigger, Stronger Pack

Evelyn watched David walk out, first saying something to the other three. Cathy looked like a deer in the headlights. She looked so lost and confused. Evelyn walked down from where she was standing and towards Cathy. "Hey," she said softly.

Cathy looked up at her. "Hey…" she said, looking down again. "So you're a vampire too?" she asked. It wasn't even really a question. She figured the whole group was vampires, right under her nose.

Evelyn made a strange face. "No. I'm not," she said, her voice suddenly very dry.

"Oh," said Cathy, still confused. "Where are we?" she asked.

"Our home," answered Evelyn. This didn't seem to reduce Cathy's confusion. "Ask David about. He can tell you more than me."

"What are you doing here, if you're not a vampire?" asked Cathy.

Evelyn had now stood up and was pacing around the chair Cathy was sitting in. Quietly, Evelyn said "I have no idea…" but quickly said in a loud clear voice that made Cathy think she wasn't meant to hear the first part said, "David's like my boyfriend."

Cathy wondered if Evelyn had meant "like" in the way many people do, as just filler, or if she meant it as if he was only "like" her boyfriend, and not her boyfriend. "So you live in a cave?" she asked.

"Yes," said Evelyn, as if daring Cathy to challenge her.

"Okay," said Cathy, throwing her hands up as if to say, "Whatever. To each's own."

Evelyn was no longer looking at Cathy, and was staring off into the distance. The silence was starting to make Cathy uncomfortable. "You changed your hair," she said, trying to start the conversation again.

"Yeah," said Evelyn, touching her now red hair. Evelyn apparently did not feel like talking anymore and got up to sit down on a couch some distance away and look moody. Cathy thought about getting up to follow, since she didn't like just sitting there, but wasn't sure if she was allowed to get up out of her seat.

"Can I get up!" she yelled at the boys, standing near the fountain. They looked at her and laughed, but other than that didn't pay any attention. She sighed and slumped into her chair. Now she was moody too.

Miles away, David's bike was pulling up in front of Max's house. Max opened the door hurriedly, and seeing David alone, ushered him quickly inside. "News?" he asked.

"We found her," said David.

"Her?"

"Yes, her."

"Well, where is she? I told you to bring her to me—"

"It isn't like we thought. It was just a newborn. Abandoned. She didn't even know who made her, or that there were other vampires."

"And you didn't bring her to me?"

"I didn't know if you wanted to… be revealed to her yet. I figured we should look at our options."

"Options?" Max rubbed his chin.

"Personally, I don't think she should be destroyed." David's face was emotionless. It wasn't much to him when wayward vampires died, but making a bigger, stronger pack was something he wanted. He thought Max would see it the same way. "Our numbers our small as they are…" David started.

"And a small territory to hunt in."

"We could expand… Los Gatos could easily become—"

"Los Gatos is already under_ my_ control—"

"And how many are living there? We could work something out… there's more territory than you give us now. You could have a bigger, stronger—"

"It is none of your concern how many of mine are living in Los Gatos, or any of my other territories. You're talking about six vampires in a concentrated area. You don't even use all of Santa Carla, you feed mostly off the trash on the boardwalk."

"Alright, then, we'll spread out. We can hunt in pairs, around the whole city." David's lust for power made him want to fight for his vision of a strong coven of vampires. He saw himself leading a strong coven, Evelyn at his side, his boys his lieutenants. Cathy could be Evelyn's friend, some feminine company. The two women would certainly bring something previously lacked to the pack. "Santa Carla is prime territory. You live here. If there were to be an attack…" now David was just using any angle he could think of to realize his dream of the pack. Max just waved his feeble excuse away. "I don't see why you are so opposed to extending our… family." David knew Max had a weakness of the familial aspect of things. Max's feature's softened. "She's young…" David said softly. "She could use a father. She's not but sixteen…" David was playing his final card. In his mind he pictured Cathy, looking so lost and afraid in the cave, because he knew Max was watching his thoughts, and that he couldn't resist another lost child.

David suddenly felt silly, like a young child pleading with his father to keep a stray dog.

Max sighed. "Keep her. For the time being. Teach her. Train her. Then bring her to me. We'll see."

David smiled, thought it was cold. He was pleased. He stood up and left Max's house, heading back to the cave.

Evelyn sat brooding on the couch. She wanted the blood. She wanted to be one of them. Why wouldn't David give it to her? She heard the roar of an engine outside, and stood up, walking toward the entrance of the cave. Soon—too soon for a normal person—he came walking into the cave. She caught him in her arms and said softly, "David, what's going on?"

He raised a hand to her, telling her to wait, and walked up to Cathy. "You are to stay with us for the time being. You cannot leave the cave unless we tell you. We're going to teach you what you're maker should have."

David led Evelyn up to her area with the bed, and sat her down on it. "You're hair," he said in a low voice.

"I dyed it," said Evelyn, her voice betraying a hint of coolness.

"It's sexy," said David, running his fingers through it.

Evelyn looked at David, ignoring his fingers. "What's going on?" she asked, more firmly this time.

David took a deep breath. "Cathy is the vampire. Her sire—her vampire maker—abandoned her. Now that I think of it, we probably destroyed him months ago before he could find her again," David looked pensive. "It doesn't matter." He smirked. "If he was going around making random newborns it's just an added bonus that he's destroyed."

Evelyn held her gaze with David. "So what happens now?" she asked.

"We teach her. Eventually I want to maker her a member of the pack."

Evelyn couldn't believe it. Make her? Make her before Evelyn? Her mouth was slightly open and her eyes were wide.

David's eyebrows rose. He had expected her to be happy to have a friend. Then he heard her thoughts loud and clear. _'Her before me?'_ and pondered this.

Suddenly Evelyn said it, forcing David to respond. "Then when will you make me!?"

David looked at her, his face blank.

"You'll maker her, some random girl, but you keep me waiting around!? What is it!? What do you want!?" She was yelling now.

He moved close to her. "It isn't something you ask for," he said angrily. "It's something I give at my leisure." His face was cold.

Evelyn's voice matched his coldness. "Then at least do me the courtesy of telling me your plans for me. You're not my master. I'm not at your leisure. Tell me."

David turned around. "Max has ordered… that by the twenty-first you will either be a vampire or dead."

Evelyn became very quiet. "Well that's an easy choice," she said. "For me at least. I don't want to die, David."

A shadowy figure appeared on the other side of one of the curtains hanging around the bed area and Evelyn saw Dwayne. David met Dwayne's eyes and said, "Yes, I need to talk with you all. Follow me back…" and he left to go speak with the boys.

A sudden wave of terror and despair swept over Evelyn. David wouldn't kill her, surely.


	9. Chapter 9 Change

Chapter 9- Change

David leaned against a rock in the old elevator shaft that served as their sleeping quarters. "I want to make her a part of our pack," he said.

Everyone looked serious. "Cathy or Evelyn?" asked Paul.

David's expression was unreadable. "Both."

"Tonight?" asked Marko.

"Preferably, yes," answered David. "I wanted to get your opinions, to let you know before I told them."

"Alright," said Paul. "You know how we feel about Evelyn."

Marko nodded.

"Dwayne?" asked David.

Dwayne looked thoughtful. They would be expanding in a new direction. Then he grinned and said "Alright."

David nodded. This had gone easier than he had expected. As they landed lightly outside the entrance to the tunnel to their sleeping area, David told the others quietly, "I want to turn Evelyn first. We should send Cathy away. She should get whatever she wants from her house. One of us should go with her, Paul?" he asked, smirking. Paul nodded and broke away from the group to take Cathy away.

Evelyn sat on the bed, unable to move. "He wouldn't kill me, surely," she thought. "Surely…" She saw them come back, and contemplated running away. It wouldn't be smart to be on their own turf. The reality that she lived with killers set in. She was living in a cave with vampires! She had a life before, where was it? Could she even leave David, to save herself? It was the craziest thing she'd ever thought about. She saw Paul and Cathy leave. Cathy looked around as she left through the entryway to the cave, but Paul pulled her forward. "What's going on?" she thought.

David was standing in the main part of the old hotel's lobby, by the fountain. "Evelyn!" he called. She stood up, but still couldn't move. She clung to the bedpost with one hand, the other resting on her neck unconsciously. All too quickly David was right in front of her. He stepped forward, and she didn't know what to do. "Evelyn…" he said, almost admonishingly. He placed one hand on her shoulder and said, "Would you like me to make you not afraid?"

"How?" she asked. She was very suspicious.

"In here," he said, touching her forehead.

She understood that he meant his mind tricks and swatted his hand away. He couldn't help but laugh quietly. She was… cute in her suspicious and angry fear. "What are you going to do?" she asked.

"You said between death and being a vampire, you'd choose vampire."

"Yeah."

He was leading her down the steps into the main lobby. "So that's your choice?" he asked.

"Yes," she said. They were standing near the fountain.

He moved closer to her. He was smiling, but it was hunger in his eyes. "You're ready?" he asked. He had never been so considerate before.

Her eyes were as big as saucers. "Yes," she said quietly.

"Alright." He grabbed her by both her arms and pulled her foreword. He had already changed.

"Wait!" she called out. She wasn't ready. She didn't know. She wasn't sure. If she could just have a few more minutes to think about it… but he didn't wait. He sunk his fangs into her neck. It was a strange sensation. It had hurt more than she had expected, in that the pain surprised her, but it was not so terribly painful that she could not bear it. She cried out and felt some tears slip down her face. She could feel the blood going out of her. She could feel that she was dying. She thought of her parents, her family, her friends. She should have said something to them, she should have prepared. Why, oh why was she doing this? It was so terribly frightening. The only bright thing was her trust that David would bring her back. She hoped she was right to trust him so.

David was enjoying himself beyond words. It was the sweetest gift Evelyn could ever given him. He didn't hear her cry out, or notice her tears, or smell her fear. He knew he would have to stop soon, before it was too late. He relaxed the muscles in his jaw and pulled away from her neck. He laid her down on the stone edge of the fountain. A rattling breath came from her. Her eyes looked directly at him, and he wondered if she could still see. He hurried in biting his wrist and putting it to her lips. He did not want to waste too much time. He tilted her head forward, so the blood would run down her throat properly. As was automatic for the newly made vampire, she reached up and grabbed his wrist with her hands, holding it there. She sucked the life out of David.

This part David did not enjoy. It felt terrible to have the blood sucked out of him. His blood was his life; he hated losing it. However, he was losing it to a good cause, and he did not mind so much as he might have otherwise.

He wrenched his wrist away and Evelyn cried out. She sat up, reaching out and gasping. Blood ran stained her mouth and lips. She felt so strange.

"Oh," she groaned, putting her hand to her forehead. She tried to stand up, but fell over. David caught her and moved her to lay down on the bed. "Rest," he told her, and moved away. She continued her labored breathing.

Evelyn slept through the rest of the night, her mind plagued with strange dreams. It was like the time Isabel told Evelyn her story; her mind was filled with another's memories. She saw Isabel again, mortal and smiling. She saw Clementina, of whom Isabel had spoken. She saw flashes if Dwayne, Marko, and finally Paul, both mortal and undead. But it wasn't like Isabel's story, chronologically laid out like a movie, it was like a surreal dream, disjointed and nonsensical. She didn't understand, and when she awoke, she remembered even less.

It was the middle of the day, an unnatural time for either a human or a vampire to wake up, but she was neither a human nor a vampire anymore. She was caught in the middle.

She stood up, and though she didn't fall down this time, she felt drugged. Before, when she was awake during the daytime, she would go through the junk laying around the cave, specifically in the fountain.

She found an old skateboard wheel, and tossed it up and down idly. She lay back, still tossing the old wheel, halfway to sleep. She tossed the wheel up and down, up and down, in a steady rhythm. She stared off into space until the rhythm was broken. The wheel hadn't come down. Evelyn looked up for some sign of where the wheel had gone, but there was none. She hadn't heard it land, and there was no where for it to have gotten caught on up there. She sat up, and in the distance she heard the vampires awakening.


	10. Chapter 10 Halfway Gone

Chapter 10- Halfway Gone

Author's Notes: Okay, I'm really sorry. There was a long wait for the last one, and it wasn't very long. I'm sorry. After all that wait I should have given you a big fat chapter, but I didn't. I don't deserve reviews for making you wait so long, but if you'd like to grace me with your words I would be a big, fat zeppelin filled with joy. *hangs head in shame.

Note: the time when Evelyn is a half vampire is represented in a different style than I usually write in. This is because I write from the characters perspective, even though it is third person. It's still from Evelyn or David's perspectives, not omniscient. So, since Evelyn can't remember everything that happened, it's more of vignette style.

Evelyn rubbed her neck. The marks had disappeared already, but it felt as if they were still there, underneath the skin. The whole area on her neck around them felt strange, almost like a bruise was underneath.

David stood before her, with an audience of Marko, Paul, and Dwayne behind him. He seemed so different! She just wanted to lurch forward and be held by him forever, which was a much more submissive feeling than she'd ever had, though the longing for closeness was familiar. "How do you feel?" he asked. His tone was rather flat, but his voice sounded so much different!

Evelyn was concentrating on it and holding it in her mind when she realized that several seconds had passed since the question had actually been asked. She was a bit too slow in answering. She focused, closing her eyes for a second, and opened her mouth to speak. She was still having trouble thinking. "My whole body feels strange. All my tiny cells are moving and glowing…" It was like her mouth was moving independently because she was concentrating on how different her own voice sounded.

"That is the blood and the bite. Your transition will be much more intense than someone who drank our blood from the bottle."

"Huh?" said Evelyn. She hadn't been paying attention. She had just noticed how many colors were in the fibers of the carpet and the dust. David took her face in his gloved hand and turned it towards him, and Evelyn understood. "My whole body hurts, too. It feels so… dry."

David smiled a devil's grin. "Then have a drink!" said Marko cheerfully from behind her. He was holding a jeweled bottle filled with blood. She was positive it was blood; she could smell it.

"Gimme," she said. She felt about six years old. She just wantedand wanted and WANTED and really didn't care what happened. She just _wanted_. She held out her hands like a toddler holds out its hands for a sippy cup of milk.

Marko handed the bottle filled with undead blood to her. Just before she put it to her lips, David put his hand over the mouth of the bottle. "If you drink that, you'll become a part of the pack. You'll be our sister forever and ever."

"Forever and ever…" said Evelyn, pensively. "Amen!" David had never been much into the ceremony of inducting new members into the pack—in the Old World they called it the Dark Birth or something ridiculously elaborate and pretentious like that—so he moved his hand away. He had never told any of the others what they were getting into. In fact one could say he tricked them at worst and lured them in under false pretenses at best. But if this worked best, if this is what true leaders did, then so be it. A vampire's most valued defense against time was its ability to change, to evolve.

Evelyn drank down the sweet, red liquid. Nothing ever tasted so good, nor was more satisfying. All too soon, the bottle was taken away. She frowned and made a face at David, who just handed the bottle to Marko who disappeared again. "But I _want_ it," she said. David just looked at her, and he thought there was a look of understanding in his eyes. "Rah!" said Evelyn, half growling, half yawning. It was the sound of an unhappy baby lioness. When her lips came back together there was something new. Twin fangs stuck like tiny daggers out of her gums, protruding past her lip. Her yellow eyes widened in surprise as her hands went to her mouth. She found she could move her arms at an alarming speed and was even more surprised, and even _more_ so to see she had nails like claws. "Oh!" she cried. She flexed her hands and ran her tongue across her teeth.

She found that in this state she could see more clearly, hear better, and smell everything. She heard birds and surfers, but what she heard most was a slow pounding that she instinctively knew was David's heartbeat. She stepped forward and put her head on David's chest. She had to lean down a bit, because David was not very tall, but the position, which would have been awkward if she were human, seemed much more natural now. Her muscles were simply more adept at moving and holding positions for longer without tiring. She never wanted to leave him, not ever. They were more than lovers now; they were kin.

But David wasn't the only heart she heard. She could also hear Marko's, Paul's, and Dwayne's… and something far, far off in the distance. Something much slower she didn't even consciously notice. "I hear you!" she said excitedly.

"Didn't you hear me? I told you," started David.

"_Part of the pack_," she repeated in unison with him. She giggled. She was feeling most giddy and unusual. And still so strangely childish! She thought that once she joined the pack she would quit feeling inferior. Not so! But now she felt taken care of, their little sister, and David's personal companion. His lover. His female part. She had no idea what to call herself in terms of her relationship with David. "Girlfriend" seemed so little, so cheap, so limited.

The next day Evelyn woke up. It was seven o'clock and since it was summertime, the sun wouldn't set for another hour and a half or so. She sat up in the covers and peered through the cave through a curtain of red hair.

_So strange. I cannot tell. Did I dream my whole life? Was I anything before this? Did I have a father before David, a brother before Paul, Dwayne, and Marko, a sister before Cathy? Cathy and I are two of the same. I can feel it. We are two parts of the same thing. _

_A green lawn. A brick house. Suburban life. High school. Dances. Acceptance letters to college. I was so excited. Did it ever really happen? My whole mortal life, trickling out of my head like a leaky faucet. All because of him. Ever since I met them._ _He sucked out my life when he sucked out my blood, and the memories with it._

David did that. He could make you forget. He could make the things you used to do seem strange and foreign and strange things seem normal. Some small part of her screamed "You're in a cave! Your parents are worried! Your friends are worried! You dropped out of school! Go home!" but it was all lost in the vast blackness of David's trench coat.

Evelyn got out of bed and wandered around, shuffling through junk, ancient junk, until she came to what she was looking for: an old mirror. She looked at herself, wholly visible because she was invited into the cave, and thought that weeks ago (_How much time has it been? How long have I been here? Weeks? Months?_) the boys had stood out on that boardwalk in San Francisco. Now she looked like one of them. Indistinguishable from their style of dress. She was a street bum, living in a cave, on the expressway to full-fledged vampirism. She hadn't even felt it. Hadn't even felt a change at all until David's blood was running down her throat.

A skateboard wheel fell from the ceiling, directly at her feet. _How strange…_

If things were a blur before, they certainly were now. She could feel **everything**, but it felt as if nothing had meaning, nothing was registering.

When the boys flew out from the other caverns of the cave, she was crouched at the foot of a cabinet, going through the old junk, ancient junk, looking for what she wanted while David stood silently watching to the side. He knew what his fledgling was searching for. "Where is it!" she shrieked. "Where do you keep it? David…" she half sobbed, "I _need_ it David! I _need_ it! You don't understand. I'll die!"

"You need it," he said, verifying her statement. He paced slowly forward, silent except for the soft crunching of his boots on the dirty floor. Then he spoke slowly, "You certainly need it. But you're wrong. I understand." Suddenly he was directly behind her, and he turned her face in his ungloved hand to look at him, forcing her to make eye contact. "I have understood every night for a hundred and fifty years. I understood when I woke up alone in a bloody bed. It's the worst at first, always. But you won't die. Not for a long, long time. And if you figure out a way to feed, you'll live forever." He crouched down next to her. "You'll never grow old, Evelyn, and you'll never die. But you must feed."

The other boys all looked at each other. They remembered those words, those exact words. He had said them to each of the Lost Boys, at one time or another, when they were newly turned. Dwayne, the oldest besides David, had once said that David's sire had said them to him when he was turned, but the others didn't know if he was just guessing or if David had told him. Dwayne seemed to be the only one of them who knew anything, a single iota, about David's life before California.

Seeing Evelyn as a freshly turned vampire had made David dream. It was the same dream he always had whenever someone was turned. There was a beautiful woman, Clementina, fair skinned and dark haired. She spoke with a thick Italian accent. "Come here, David. Come sit next to me." She beckoned to him from a bed surrounded by gossamer curtains. It was her bed at her wealthy estate in the country. David did not need to be told twice. He removed his frock coat and boots at once, smiling.

Afterwards, he rolled over to sleep. He was so sleepy. Clementina encircled him with her arms and whispered in his ear, "I have something to give you."

"Mmm," said David, sleepily. "Now? This very instant?"

"It cannot wait another instant," she answered. "In fact, I believe it is long overdue."

He was about to open his mouth to speak when he felt a pain in his shoulder, right at the base of his neck. Instead he cried out. He struggled and tried to hit her away but she was much stronger than he thought. He tried to get out of the bed but he was tangled in the sheets and she was holding him so tightly. He yelled until he started feeling faint and spots appeared around his eyes. He looked up as the lights around them grew dimmer and the bed seemed to come up to meet him from behind. He gasped for air. He couldn't see. He could only hear. He heard her rustling with the glasses they had drunk the wine out of, but couldn't tell what she was doing. The next thing he could tell there was a cool glass against his lips and a fiery hot liquid spilling down into his mouth. He could either swallow or choke, so he swallowed.

The effect came instantly. He could feel the life coming back into his body as he drank. Some part of him instinctively knew that this was what was going to save his life, so he drank. There was no thought, really. It was all he _could_ do. And then he passed out again.

He woke up later. He didn't know what time it was. At first he didn't remember what had happened, but then he sat up and felt the dried blood on his shoulder. He turned around to see the pillow and sheets were covered with blood. He looked around and sat up further, realizing he was still naked. He was actually afraid. He felt his shoulder for any sign of a wound but there was none. He got out of bed, arms wrapped around himself, shivering from the cold of the night. The fire and all the lights had gone out and he was alone.

He put on his pants and boots and went to the washtub. He splashed water across his face and washed the blood off of his shoulder and back. He still had the taste of her blood in his mouth, so he rinsed it out with water, but the water seemed flat and flavorless. It did nothing to quench the burning thirst he felt. He cupped some water in his hands and drank more and more, but it was useless. Then he looked up into the small mirror that hung above the washtub and started. He was see-through. He could see right through himself to the bloody bed behind him. "Oh, God. Please…"

Suddenly there was a voice behind him, and the room was filled with candlelight. "They all say something like that. Usually when I kill them. The three most common words from dying lips: please, God, and don't. I believe you uttered all three earlier."

"I…" stuttered David.

"You are what I am, now. _Un vampiro_. A vampire. You are now and will be every night hereafter. There is no going back." Clementina smiled. It was only later that David would learn that if he had shoved a stake through her then, he would have gone back.

"What's going to happen to me?" David asked.

"You will never grow old, David, and you will never die, but you must feed," she said. David almost whimpered. He had never felt so small. "You are thirsty, no?"

David wanted to deny it if it would make her go away but he couldn't so he nodded.

"Then finish dressing and come with me."

That very night she made him feed. He didn't want to kill that man, but she cut his throat open with a stiletto knife and then there was no hope for him. They had ridden all the way to the nearest town and she had gone into the pub, bold since she was a lady, and made him wait behind in the alleyway. When he was through with the man, his last drop drained, he stood up and spat the blood that was in his mouth onto the floor. Clementina hit him over the head. "Don't be wasteful!" He almost whimpered again but covered it with a glaring look. "And stop that whimpering. That's no way for a vampire to behave. We rule the night, we don't whimper in it. Stand up. You could command millions one day, if you live long enough." David stood up straight, and dropped the man's body, his face morphing back to normal. On the inside he was hardening. Clementina smiled a tender smile and reached up to stroke his face. "Come now. Enough learning for tonight. We need to get back; the dawn will kill us."

It was raining outside. Paul, Dwayne, and Marko sat on the beat up couches in the cave while David was with Evelyn, talking to her. "He _asked_ her," said Paul. "He _asked_ her if she wanted to become a vampire. He gave her a _choice_." His tone was that of wonderment. "Did he ask either of you?" He sat up, looking at his brothers and partners in crime.

Dwayne and Marko shook their heads. "No… no, man. He just did it No questions asked. He just gave me his blood and I didn't even know what it was."

They both looked at Dwayne, who had known David the longest. "It's not his way to ask. He asked me if I would be his _friend_. He asked if I would like to travel with him. We met while traveling, actually. I was suspicious, but I said yes. I didn't think he would… but he left to get drinks to celebrate our friendship, but the whiskey was laced with his blood. _That_ is his way."

David came down the steps to where they were sitting. "Ready for a game of cards, boys?" he asked, holding up a deck. They pulled up a table, leaning to one side, of course, and Marko began to deal.

Cathy and Evelyn sat together on the bed, lounging about while the boys played cards. Cathy leaned over to Evelyn. "Hey, I got a question for ya."

"What?" asked Evelyn, turning to face Cathy directly.

"It's kinda personal… and weird…"

"We live in a cave together. Personal and weird is our motto."

Cathy laughed. "Okay, okay." She took a breath. "What's the deal with you and David?"

Evelyn tilted her head. "Um, you mean, like, as in defined in _words_?"

"No, I mean more like… do you love David?"

"Yeah… I mean, yes, I do. Very much. I can't…"

"Hm. Wow. Can't what?"

"I can't… leave. I just can't. Even if I wanted to. But I don't want to, not ever. I can't even want to want to leave. I just want to be with him and to stay and to stay… does that sound corny?" asked Evelyn.

"Just a bit. But it's okay. It's me asking the dopey questions here."

"'Kay. Why do you ask?"

"I don't know. I was just wondering what the deal was. You two seem… close."

"Yeah we're close! He's like my boyfriend."

"_Like_ your boyfriend or he _is_ your boyfriend?"

"Well, we haven't said it in so many words, and since I was turned it's like even more than that, but I'm his special lady and he's my guy so… it's like that. He really cares for me. He'd kill for me. He has killed for me. I've never met anyone who'd do that for me before."

"Hmm," said Cathy. "He kills for you?"

"Yeah. Whenever people fuck around with me he just," she made a chomping motion and a smacking motion with her fist, "smacks 'em down. No questions."

"Does that make you feel weird?"

"Yeah, sometimes. It used to. I guess I'd better get used to killing." Cathy saw Evelyn was nervous when she said that. "But at the same time it's disturbing, it's also really flattering. Like, it makes me feel like the best thing in the world! Is that sick, that someone getting hurt could make me feel like that?" Evelyn asked.

"I don't even know what sick is anymore. I don't think I could say," answered Cathy pensively. "Hey, another question: where are you from?"

"Huh?"

"Where are you from? You kinda have a bit of an accent…"

Evelyn shut her mouth tight, like her accent was going to jump out and betray her. "Oh… um, I'm from Texas."

"Texas? Whoa. I thought people from Texas had a _much_ stronger accent than you do."

"Not all Texans do. I lived in the city, in Austin."

"Did you have a horse?"

"I just said I lived in the city!" Evelyn laughed. "I rode a horse once when I was in Indian Princesses. No one has a horse in the city, except really rich kids and equestrian freaks. No, I drive an old Camaro."

"Oh. Here's another: how old are you?"

"What's with these questions? I'm twenty-three. How old are you?"

Cathy pursed her lips together. She was embarrassed about being so young. "I'm sixteen."

"Oh. Wow. Sixteen? Damn…"

"What?"

"Oh, it's just, you're so young." Cathy made an unhappy face. "No, I mean, like, so young have been turned into a vamp and to have run away from home."

"It wasn't really my choice…" Cathy was bitter.

Evelyn felt bad. She'd had a choice, and she'd picked vampire. She thought she really could learn to love it, if she really wanted to. Really what she had picked was David. That's what she had wanted, even more than being young forever, sleeping all day, and partying all night.

A voice rang through the cave. "Evelyn! Come see this!" It was David.

"There's my guy," said Evelyn, and she got off the bed and walked over. Cathy followed a few paces behind. "What?" she asked. She didn't see anything out of the ordinary with the makeshift card table.

"Aw, he just wants you to see how he's _owning our asses_ at Texas Hold 'Em," said Paul.

"Yeah, he just wants to rub it in our faces," said Marko.

Evelyn laughed and sunk down onto David's black-clad lap. He chuckled at his victory and wrapped one arm around Evelyn's waist. He trailed his fingers across her stomach as his hand came to rest on her thigh. "Hand me the money," he said, smiling. He laughed as he looked around at his boys. "This is how it oughta be, boys! Money in my pocket, cards in my hand, and cigarette…" Evelyn took the cigarette out from behind his ear and put it in his mouth. "Cigarette in my mouth. Light me, Ev." Evelyn took out his black lighter with a fanged skull on it and lit his cigarette for him, since both his hands were occupied. He pulled her so that she was closer and her long legs slipped and ended up on either side of him so that she was straddling him.

"Well, you're sure jolly tonight," said Evelyn, smiling down at him.

"What can I say? I'm feeling good. Got a lot of problems resolved in the last few days."

"Well, anyways, I can't sit like this."

"Aw, you're sitting just fine. Very fine."

Evelyn kissed him and turned around where three male vampires and one female vampire gawked awkwardly.

"If you two get any more fucking precious…" threatened Dwayne.

"You'll what?" challenged David. The smirk hadn't left his face yet so it wasn't a serious threat. _Wow_, though Evelyn. _He really is jovial tonight. He seems so much more… lighthearted._ Evelyn squeezed David's shoulder and got off, running her fingers across his back as she walked away. As much as David wanted to go follow her swaying hips right back into a good quiet place in the cave, he wasn't about to abandon his boys.

Later that night David sat in a wing backed chair, smoking a cigarette and brooding. His good-naturedness at having solved the problems of the rogue and of Evelyn's mortality status had faded somewhat, and he was back to his usual self. He was leaning over, idly stroking his stubble, when Evelyn came up behind him. She leaned over, fully in fang, and grazed his exposed neck with her razor-sharp teeth. David sat bolt upright in his chair. "I can bite back now, y'know," she said softly in his ear. David was momentarily paralyzed. "But I'm _so_ thirsty, David." She slinked around the chair so that she was in front of him. She was wearing black peg leg jeans, so tight they almost didn't fit at all, and a black tank top. Her eyes glowed out from under her red hair, the features of her face demonic, but it didn't seem grotesque to him.

She walked forward slowly until she was so close that his legs were in between hers, though he was sitting down and she was still standing up. "You've got to help me, David," she said so softly. He knew what she was doing. She was trying to seduce him into giving her blood, prolonging the time until she would have to make her first kill.

"I can't…" he said. "You've got to… you've got to…" He seemed to be having trouble speaking. "You need to learn to get blood for yourself. Your instincts know what to do." She raked her now claw-like fingernails over his shirt, almost ripping it. "I can't help you with this. I can't…" His words were just a whisper when he breathed out. She moved her claws up and ran them along his neck. Waves of feeling shot down into his stomach and lower. She knew how a vampire's body worked, how sensitive the neck area was, along with other areas where major veins and arteries were, and now she had the fangs and claws to work with.

"You can." she whispered, and this time he didn't say anything. He was never one for denying himself what he wanted. He could feel his fangs pushing against his gums and lips as well as himself pushing against the tight crotch of his jeans.

He looked around. It was an unspoken rule that the boys had that they would not taint the chairs and couches. "Here," he said, and the next thing Evelyn knew they were flying through the cave and were going through the tunnels to the room David used to use solely for personal storage. Now it had a makeshift bed made of several layers of blankets and pillows on the ground.

He laid her down and kissed, undoing her pants with one hand. She pulled back and looked at him, and he could see the cold, hard thirst in her eyes as she took off his shirt. He knew all along there were ulterior motives to this tryst, but the look on her face confirmed it all. She wanted blood. She also wanted sex, but first she wanted blood. _That_ was her number one goal. This was not the order he preferred to do things in, but he knew that stopping her and redirecting the course of this would be rough indeed. For this part, at least, she was in control.

His black shirt was tossed aside and she turned him over so that she was sitting on him. Looking down at him, she stroked his neck with her clawed fingertips, scratching at the pale skin, before leaning over and biting down. She would have tried to be gentle, but she was so new at this she didn't know how. She just bit down suddenly and it hurt. David squirmed underneath her from discomfort. She was rough. So new. She would need to be taught.

Oh god. Did she know when to stop? David lay in wait, feeding his childe and his lover. She needed to be taught when to stop. David started feeling the pull on his veins. She was taking too much. "That's enough," he said softly. "Stop," he said. It didn't register in her blood-starved brain. "Stop," he commanded, using his power as a sire over her. She heard him this time and stopped. She was still sitting on top of him, blood running down her lips. His blood running down her lips. "You could kill a vampire that way," he told her.

She continued looking down at him. No change in her face. Her hard yellow eyes blinked slowly. "You could have killed _me_ if you hadn't stopped!" he said, forcefully, pushing her off of him. "Do you understand? I am NOT your victim! We can share blood but you cannot just _take_, like a greedy child."

"…a greedy childe," she repeated slowly.

David reached over and took her face in his hands. "You've got to learn to control it." He wiped the excess blood of his neck and put his shirt back on before getting up and leaving.

"But!" she said as he left. When she heard the rushing sound that meant he had taken flight and was gone she finished softly, "we didn't even get to do it…" She fastened her pants and pulled her legs in close to her, resting her cheek on her knees, and then realized her mistake. She felt the strange ball in her throat and refused to blink her now brown eyes for fear that she would start crying. She bit her lip and held her eyes as wide as she could, but three hot tears escaped anyway. She refused to wipe them. She refused to acknowledge their presence. He would not make her cry. She would not allow herself to cry. No more tears came.


	11. Chapter 11 Mind Off Your Troubles

Chapter 11- Stories Take Your Mind Off Your Troubles

Evelyn stood up and walked out. She didn't want to be in this room. She refused to sit alone and mope. _Stupid_, she thought. _You have to quit being stupid. Don't make him regret this!_ Suddenly she had another sensation, like someone whispering to her. She started and looked around. It had been a feeling, but it wasn't hers, like a little tug at her heart. She stepped out into the main lobby and looked around. Paul and Dwayne were sitting on the couch, turned around looking at her, and from the looks on their faces she could tell they knew _exactly_ what had just happened. _No secrets among vampires, I see_, she thought.

"Nope," said Dwayne.

"What?" said Evelyn, taken aback. "I didn't say anything."

"Didn't need to," said Paul.

"You're in my _head_?" she half asked, half yelled.

"Well, we're not _in your head_—" started Dwayne.

"Yeah, make it sound less psycho," interjected Paul.

"—But we can hear your thoughts."

"What?" she said, unbelieving.

"Mostly," added Paul.

"Yeah, we don't hear _everything_. Usually. Your half connected to us, you know. It grows stronger every time you drink from the bottle, or David. That thought just now just happened to be particularly strong," said Dwayne.

"Yeah, I don't hear, like, _every little thing_ Dwayne thinks about. That would be boring!" said Paul.

"Man, don't be a dick!" said Dwayne, hitting Paul's arm.

"I _have_ a dick. Wanna see?" countered Paul, lifting his pelvis.

"No!" said Dwayne, waving his hands. "I've seen your dick. It's not that great."

"Ew… but now I have to defend my honor!" he stood up on the couch, facing Evelyn, hands at his zipper.

Evelyn gave a yelp of surprise, but then mentally scolded herself for it. _Paul would._ "Nope, Paul, don't need to see it. Keep it in your pants. Wait… you've seen his dick?"

Dwayne grabbed Paul by the wrists and forced him to sit down. "Sit down, man. And shut up, actually, too. We were trying to explain something, not give _David's girlfriend_ a peep show."

"Very true," said Paul.

"No, no, no," said Evelyn. "Answer my question. What were the circumstances?"

"Oh," said Dwayne. "Well, I didn't _mean_ to. It wasn't like _that._"

"You wish, Evie!" Interjected Paul.

"Nah, I mean. We've all lived together for decades… and we have to bathe _sometime_. Shit happens. Not to mention the fact that Paul is an exhibitionist."

"The offer is always open!" said Paul.

"So. Mind reading," prompted Evelyn, now sitting on the chair across from the couch.

"Yeah. We all've learned to control it. We keep quiet the bits that ought to be kept quiet—say some more personal moments between David and you, I don't wanna see that shit, man—and sort of… page… each other when we want to talk," Dwayne continued.

"Like a walkie talkie," added Paul.

"But you, little Evelyn, don't know how to control it. It's not a big deal, we can't even hear you all the time without trying. You're not even a full vampire. It's just sometimes… you know those thoughts that are like those things you _would_ say? So you sort of say them in your head? Those tend to be louder," continued Dwayne.

"Can you hear people's thoughts? Like, human people," Evelyn asked.

"I've got this one, bro," said Paul, leaning forward like they were in a business meaning. "Umm, like sometimes? But I mean, not _all_ the time. That would be so fuckin' annoying. It'd be just like _shut up_ all the time! Anyways, back when I was turned, I heard people all the time, especially those thoughts like Dwayne was talking about, the loud ones. It's just something you learn to control."

"And some vampires aren't even very good at it. It took me a while before I started hearing mortals' thoughts, and I still just hear big things. David's really good a picking people's brains though. I guess it's like his… specialty," said Dwayne.

"And back there?" asked Evelyn, nodding her head towards the back room she had just been in.

"Those were some pretty heavy emotions…" said Paul.

"Um, yeah…" said Dwayne. Evelyn could tell they were kind of uncomfortable with it.

Evelyn looked away, putting on a tough face. She didn't want to think about that too much. One, it hurt. Two, it was embarrassing for a million different reasons. But she had to ask one thing: "Could I have really killed him?"

Paul snorted. Dwayne chuckled. "Killed David? Probably not. You could have seriously _hurt_ him, but I seriously doubt you could have killed him. He's pretty strong, as California vamps go. He's _pretty_ old, not as old as Max, but old enough to not be considered a kid like you and Cathy, and even Paul here," said Dwayne.

"I'm not a kid vamp!" said Paul incredulously.

"You're still in your first human life-span. You're a kid," said Dwayne matter-of-factly.

"Um, how old are you guys?" asked Evelyn, feeling better that she hadn't been on the brink of killing her lover.

"On a final note, don't let it freak you out. We all screw up. David was just being… a tad dramatic. We cool?" he asked.

"Cool," said Evleyn.

"Cool," said Paul in that way that you knew that just his knowing everyone was happy, made him happy. It was just a nice reminder that the boys—Paul included—actually did care about her well-being.

"Paul here is almost forty, and I'm a hundred and twenty six. Marko just passed sixty a few years ago, still pretty young. Honestly, age sort of disappears. It's not really important. It's more like every year I have my twenty-fifth birthday all over again."

"Same here," said Paul. "I'm twenty-four now. This April, I'll turn twenty-four. Next year, I'll have my twenty-fourth birthday. Exciting, I know. It gets better, 'cause you see, the year after that, I'll be twenty-_four_." Evelyn laughed. Paul smiled a big, broad smile. "See? There's a smile."

Dwayne patted her on the back reassuringly. Kind of like a big brother. "Hey, where's Cathy anyhow?" asked Evelyn. "Cathy!"

"Um… here!" Cathy called back, running out of a hallway (or was it a tunnel? Evelyn didn't know), looking a mite dusty.

"What _have_ you been doing?" asked Evelyn.

"Um, cleaning my room?" and suddenly she looked very silly, her youthful face only adding to it. Everyone laughed.

"Um, may I ask _why_?" asked Evelyn.

"Well, I need a place to put my things, see, and uh… there was stuff already in the room and so I needed to move it, before I could put mine in," she answered.

"Wow. I didn't get _my_ own room," said Evelyn.

"Benefits of being a member," said Paul. Evelyn gave him a look. "Plus, you got the bed of honor! That's, like, centrally located. And well ventilated. It's not all dark and dank. That shit back there… that's, like, vampires only. You wouldn't like it. Wouldn't have liked it. Until now," Paul corrected.

"Yeah. And who's bed is that? I mean, why is it there?"

Cathy sat down quietly, waiting for an answer. She needed to be filled in on a lot of information as well.

Dwayne and Paul looked at each other awkwardly. "David… didn't… explain this too you?" Dwayne asked.

"No, you see, he's not terribly forthcoming. I dunno if you noticed," said Evelyn.

Suddenly there was another whisper in her, this time in her brain. _Star_. "Who's Star?" she said suddenly. The connection cut off.

"Wow," said Paul. "_That_ is a question for David."

"C'mon, he's not gonna tell me. Or at least not like you will. I've met his ex-wife, for god's sake. C'mon, tell me," said Evelyn.

"Yeah, I wanna know too!" said Cathy. Evelyn looked at her. "What, I'm curious! You're all terribly mysterious…"

"Um, yeah. So spill," said Evelyn.

Paul fidgeted. Evelyn knew he wanted to tell. He didn't like secrets, or rather, he wasn't very good at keeping them. Evelyn briefly wondered how he had managed to keep being a vampire a secret for so long. _Chances are he'd tell some chick on the beach trying to impress her so he could slip it to her…_ thought Evelyn, but then immediately tried to unthink it hoping Paul hadn't heard. Apparently, they didn't. Evelyn gave him a look, biting her lip and widening her eyes. "Okay! Whatever. It's not like it's a secret," said Paul.

Dwayne nodded.

"Okay. So she was this chick, right? And we all thought she was cool, right? Turns out, she wasn't. Turns out, she was a two-faced bitch. So this guy at the boardwalk, regular human guy, tries to chat her up, but she turns him down. Which was probably a good thing since she was _way_ over her head at the time. She was half, like you. We'd tried to turn her, see? Max's orders. She saw us one night—y'know, saw what we were—and she had this kid with her, and David didn't want to kill them. It was all terribly weird. We still don't know whether it was the kid or the girl. Anyhow, we had to turn them. So she can't deal with it, and won't make her first kill. She goes nearly two months. I have no idea how she and the kid did it—" said Paul.

"David was real excited," continued Dwayne. "He said that if she had that kind of strength as a half, she'd be great when her instincts finally got the best of her. So Max is always on the lookout for a special lady friend, and one night he meets her. Or someone he _wants_ to be his special lady. And of course, it's hard to get practical, middle-aged ladies with kids to worry about to be vampires, so he makes this plan. This lady, see, she's got two kids, two boys. One's our age—our physical age, not our vampire age—"

"—and one is, like, twelve. And awful. You should have seen him—" interjected Paul.

"Fourteen," corrected Dwayne. "But still. The clothes were awful. But _beside the point_," he looked at Paul here. "Brevity is a virtue…"

"Right…" said Paul.

"And so, Max decides that if we get them into the family first, we're golden. Obviously Michael, the guy Star had turned down, was easier 'cause of his thing for Star, so we turned him first. David gave him the bottle. Didn't tell him what it was. Really, he never does. But a few nights later he tries to eat his brother and his brother sees his reflection in the mirror and figures it out because these stupid kids who wish they were vampire hunters gave him a comic book."

"A comic book. For real," said Paul, laughing.

"And so," continued Dwayne, annoyed by Paul's interruptions.

"Just let me tell it! You're taking too long!" said Paul.

"Okay!" said Dwayne. "Fine!" He sat back.

"Okay, so Star goes and is like 'Help us!' and these other two twelve year olds think that if they kill all of us Michael and Star and the kid will turn back to humans. Which is right, actually, but you only need to kill the _head _vampire. Max. But they are stupid, so they just go on a rampage. But they really are stupid, so they don't do it right. Here's how it went down. First, they stake Marko. In the stomach. It has to be in the _heart_. I don't know about you, but Marko does not keep his heart in his stomach. So Marko starts screaming bloody murder and we all wake up to find the kids in our cave, so we try to get them right then but they run out into the sunlight like pussies and barricade themselves in their house. That night, we come for them, and they shoot Dwayne with a toy arrow into a stereo, which electrocuted and kind of made him fall apart. Which is sort of awesome, if you think about it."

"It was definitely _not_ awesome," said Dwayne darkly.

"Also about that time they push _me_ into a bathtub of holy water. So I melted."

"Awesome," said Dwayne, making fun of Paul.

"Don't you mock me! Melting is _so_ much worse than getting killed by a _stereo_. Anyways, quit distracting me. You know how easily I get distracted. Yeah, so… anyways, David and Michael have this big showdown and Michael throws David onto these antlers. Which might have worked, but they didn't fully destroy anything major—head, heart, that sort of thing. They throw Max into a fire, but I swear that guy is so old, he could take anything. He fucking went up the chimney like Santa Claus.

"So, all of those things hurt like shit, but they don't kill a vampire. Points for creativity, but no. Just no. So at that point, we are basically dead," said Paul.

"Pretty dead," said Dwayne nodded.

"And they must have bundled us all up and buried us. I was all over the house. There's probably still bits of me, like, under countertops. I melted and took out their plumbing system. Anyways, so they clean us up and bury us, except of course they can't find Marko or Max. Old Max took off with Marko, who was healing up nicely, and went to one of Max's houses down the coast. They thought we were dead, because they couldn't really feel our consciousness anymore. Marko told us that he kept telling Max that he _knew_ we weren't dead, but since there wasn't any evidence pointing to us surviving, they just went down the coast."

"Wouldn't Max, your sire, know if you were dead?" asked Evelyn skeptically. She didn't know if she trusted Max. She didn't really know the guy.

"What makes you think Max is our sire?" said Dwayne, smirking. "Strictly speaking, David is our sire, but Max is our master because David is bound to him. When David moved out here, he started working for Max. As a show of loyalty, it's customary for the younger vampire to drink the master vampire's blood. We're bound by blood, but it's not nearly as strong as what we have with each other."

"Oh," said Evelyn.

"Who's Max?" asked Cathy.

"Shit," said Dwayne. They were all quiet for a second. "You weren't supposed to know about him till later." A few seconds later, Dwayne said, "David says it's all good. Just keep your mouth shut, naturally. Obviously we don't tell anyone about us being vampires, and we _definitely_ don't say anything about Max, unless it's to other vampires."

"Wait, you're talking to David? Where is he?" said Evelyn.

"But I'm a vampire," said Cathy, at the same time as Evelyn.

"You're kind of a phenomenon. Normally any vampire hunting in the area has to talk to us so we can talk to Max, but you… things were weird."

"Oh," answered Cathy.

"Where. Is. David!" said Evelyn, pissed they ignored her question.

"Whoa! Chill out, girl," said Paul. "He went to go replenish his system. You were kinda a drain on him. He'll be back. Don't worry about it."

Evelyn sulked. "Finish your damn story," she said sullenly. "I wanna know why you aren't nine kinds of dead. And you didn't even really answer the whole Star question."

"Just chill! It's a big story. Okay, where was I? Right. We're dead. Max and Marko, down the coast. So a couple years go by, the Emersons move away, Star and Michael go off to do god knows what, and then Grandpa Emerson goes and up and dies. You see, the weird thing was, over time, our consciousnesses started growing stronger. We were actually _haunting_ the place. Old Emerson was a tough old guy, though. Always told us to fuck off. Then these college kids move in, and we basically scare the shit out of them. Not on purpose, we were way confused. We eventually got the message across and they figured it out and dug us up. They figured out how to get a hold of Marko and he and Max showed up and that really helped us out. Long story short, we healed up, and came back."

"Oh my god! How did you _not_ mention being resurrected ever?" asked Evelyn.

"There's a lot of crazy stuff around here," answered Paul. "Resurrections are just one of the many services we offer," he said with a sarcastic smile.

"Anyways, so what about Star?" asked Evelyn.

"Star, right. She basically chilled with us for two months, pretended to be our friend, when really she was just looking for a way out. She jumped her first meal ticket out of here. Not only that, she ordered as all to be killed. Not cool," said Paul.

"Not cool," agreed Dwayne.

"So, she wasn't like… David's girlfriend?" asked Evelyn.

"Well… you see," said Paul, awkwardness filling the air.

"They were kind of hooking up," said Dwayne. "I wouldn't call them an item though. She was kind of a… easy girl. After a while she stopped putting out, though. I guess it was an early warning that she hated us all and wanted us dead."

"I'll be on the watch for that," said Paul, pointing to his eyes. Everyone laughed, but Cathy laughed harder and longer. Evelyn looked at her. She _so_ liked Paul. She had a feeling Dwayne had figured it out too.

"So, where's Marko?" asked Evelyn, breaking the silence.

"Out with David," said Dwayne.

"Yeah, he followed him out to see what was up and I guess just stayed with him," Paul elaborated.

"Ah," said Evelyn. "I see. Well, thanks boys. These stories really took my mind off my troubles," she said, standing up.

"Happy to ease a troubled mind," said Paul, giving a half wave, half salute.

"C'mon Cathy. Let's go," said Evelyn.

"Why?" said Paul?

"Girl talk. Don't eavesdrop; it's impolite." Evelyn pulled Cathy up and they walked back to where Cathy was putting her stuff. It had most of the remnants of an old hotel room. Cathy had already cleared out the debris and excess furniture, except for a makeshift vanity, made of the top of a vanity whose legs had broken off placed on top of a stack of empty drawers. The mirror was cracked, but they could see themselves in it, being invited into their own lair. There was also a dresser with large cracks in its side, but it worked so Cathy was putting her clothes in it from inside several suitcases.

"I never realized how many clothes I had…" said Cathy, sort of embarrassed.

"Yeah. I was on vacation when I met up with the boys, so I had a bunch of my clothes already packed, and they sent the rest from my dorm when I dropped out of college," said Evelyn. "I just keep it all by that bed."

"You dropped out of college?" she said, for a second not covering her shock. She'd obviously been raised to think that people who dropped out of college were bums. Evelyn realized that she actually was a sort of a bum now, by a lot of peoples' definition. She didn't work. Her boyfriend didn't work. Their only source of income was mugging and taking money from victims. They lived in a cave, didn't even have a house. She used to take showers in the ones at the beach. She used the toilets on the beach, and sometimes just went behind a boulder or a tree. Evelyn came back to reality to answer Cathy's question.

"Um, yeah. I didn't want to go back. I was having too much fun here. Sleeping all day. Partying at night. Drinking, smokin' weed whenever I want. I dunno how he does it, but Paul always seems to have a limitless supply. And David… he's kind of addicting," she said, only realizing how true it was after she said it. "He just, makes you want to be with him. I have no idea how he does it… I just didn't want to go back."

"What did your parents say?" asked Cathy.

"Oh, I don't even like thinking about that. They're really worried. They think I'm, like, on some serious drugs or something. I actually feel bad. Oh my god, I haven't seen them, or talked to them…" Evelyn suddenly sat down. She suddenly missed her parents very much and wanted to see them. She hadn't realized how she'd forgotten them, how being with _him_ had made her forget. How?

Cathy sat down beside her, her face sad as well. "Just wait. You'll start losing them more and more, all inside your own head. You'll start to just… forget. I was forgetting even as I was in my old house, with them. I wanted to leave, I wanted to leave so bad I really thought I would, but I was so scared. It seemed like the whole world had just dumped upside-down. I was scared more bad things were gonna happen. I was afraid of meeting more monsters. And sleeping here, now, just that one night, I can't believe I ever slept in my own house like that. I feel… I feel as if I just woke up."

Evelyn was almost crying now. She couldn't believe it. She was a bum and she wanted to go home! What was she thinking?

"I feel like I woke up from some horrible dream, where I was still in my own house but I was dead. I was dead and I knew it, and my parents knew it, and it was killing us all." Cathy looked at Evelyn, crying quietly beside her. "I'm sorry. I've gotten all poetic and sentimental. What I'm trying to tell you is there's no going back now. I don't actually think there was for you. It'll get easier. In fact, it'll be wonderful. I promise. This is the worst part. And the weirdest part is, you just need to… like, relax. Just be who your body knows you are. Your instincts know what's best for you, and they'll take care of you. You just have to get used to it. It'll stop hurting. I promise. It will all be great. You don't want to end up like Star, do you? Don't make that mistake." Cathy felt weird comforting the older girl, but she did it anyway.

Evelyn nodded and wiped her tears away. No going back. She had to quit crying and acting like a little girl who's homesick at camp. _ But I'm never going back!_ She thought, and she broke into a fresh round of sobs. "It hurts so bad! I can't do this! I don't know how!"

"You don't have to know how. She's right. Your body already knows how. Just wait long enough. You'll do it on your own." It was David. He was leaning against the door. His jackets were still on, wet from outside. Evelyn could only guess it had been sprinkling, or a maybe just from dumping dead people into the ocean.

Evelyn felt terrible, but she was glad David was there. Somehow, it made her feel less terrible. "I just wanna go to bed," she said. She wasn't sobbing anymore, but tears crept down her face at odd intervals. She stood up and starting walking to where her bed was. David put his still-gloved hand on her shoulder and walked with her.

Evelyn took off her shoes and pants and climbed under the sheets. She buried her face in the pillow and felt terribly alone. _David doesn't even want to be with me_, she thought sadly. _He's just standing there. Or maybe he's left again_. She looked up, but she already knew he was standing there. He had taken off his jackets and was removing his gloves. Evelyn always thought of this as David settling in.

He dug through her stuff a moment—piles of clothes coming out of suitcases, duffle bags, and cardboard boxes—until he found a pair of black pajama pants, which he tossed onto the bed. "It'll be cold soon," he said.

"I don't care. It's not a big deal anymore. You know that," said Evelyn softly, but she put them on anyway. They were comfy. She guessed that was David's way of trying to comfort her. He wasn't exactly an expert at that. "Come here," she said, deciding some instruction would be best if he was ever going to learn.

"You're not going to try and bite me again?" he asked, but he said it more matter-of-factly than one usually says with a question.

"No," said Evelyn softly.

David sat on the bed, leaning over to take off his boots. "It'll feel better when you are a full vampire. It doesn't feel good, being trapped between the two worlds. It'll be better. I promise."

"That's what Cathy said…"

"It was good advice. I heard it."

"Creeper," she accused softly.

"I was out… felt you crying." _So I came home_. The words were left unsaid, but Evelyn smiled.


End file.
